SCHMUCKER 



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REFORMATION 



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'(UNITED STATES OF' AMERICA. ! 



Discourse in Commemoration of the Glorious Reformation 
of the Sixteenth Century ; delivered before the Evange- 
lical Lutheran Synod of West Pennsylvania, by the 
Rev. S. SfcScHMUCKER, D.L., Professor of Theology 
in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg ,• pp. 131. 
ISmo. Published by Gould and Newman. 1838. 

The learned author begins with a brief view of the 
reign of Popery, before the dawn of the Reformation. 
And surely, were our fellow citizens better acquainted 
with this painful history of the Dark Ages of idolatry, 
superstition, despotism, and ferocious cruelty, which 
may be justly called the ages of legalized murder and 
rapine by priests, they would not show so much lov- 
ing-kindness to this system, perpetuated to this day, 
in popery. Our author, next, gives a brief and elo- 
quent history of the rise, spread, and triumph of the 
blessed Reformation. The way being thus prepared, 
he presents to us, the prominent features of this glo- 
rious work, and its blessed results. 

First. It gives us free access to the uncorrupted 
fountains of truth and duty — God's Holy Word, as 
the only infallible standard of faith and practice. 

Second. It has delivered the church from a multi- 
tude of doctrinal and practical corruptions. 

Third. It has given us liberty of conscience, and 
freedom from religious persecution. 

Fourth. It has delivered the civil government of 
the countries which had embraced it, from papal ty- 
ranny, and it has given a new impulse to civil liberty, 
which has been felt in every country of Europe. 

Each of these grand leading topics is discussed 
with the well known ability of Professor Schmucker. 
He is clear and luminous, and accurate in his details. 
He speaks with 'earnestness, as one ought to speak, 
who feels the vast importance of his subject ; in its 
bearings on the present welfare, and the eternal salva- 
tion of souls. He reprobates the horrid evils of Popery, 
like a true son of Luther, and the Lutheran Church. 

1 



But, in no instance do we find him violating decorum 
and charity. He writes as a gentleman, a scholar, 
and a Christian. 

This able work giving an admirable view of the 
Roman controversy, in a condensed form, will, we 
confidently trust, be extensively read. — Pr. Vindicator. 

The author has treated the subject comprehensively, 
and felicitously. After a rapid sketch of the ever 
memorable event, which he commemorates, he singles 
out some of the prominent features of the Reforma- 
tion, which tend to illustrate its value. These points 
the author has illustrated with force, and in a manner 
calculated to impress the reader with the value of 
those temporal and spiritual privileges, which he en- 
joys, as the fruits of the Reformation. — The Presby- 
terian. 

This is an able discourse, and in our opinion well 
adapted for general circulation, and deserves a place 
in Sunday-school and other Christian libraries. The 
era of which it treats, is rich in instruction— and we 
hail as an omen of good, every successful effort to 
call attention to it. — Southern Relig. Telegraph. 

This little volume has been several months before 
the public. It is written in a vigorous lucid style, 
and fully sustains the high reputation of that gifted 
author. — Philadelphia Observer. 

The deservedly high reputation of the author is too 
well known in the church to need any commendation 
at our hands. We will only remark, that the subject 
if happily treated, and with all the force and compre- 
hensiveness, characteristic of the former productions 
of the same pen. The religious public generally will, 
no doubt, feel anxious to peruse this work, and we 
take pleasure, in expressing the confident belief, that 
it will abundantly compensate all its purchasers and 
readers. It ought to be circulated throughout the 
land, and as it is written in a mild and argumentative 
style, we would earnestly recommend it to Roman 
Catholics as well as Protestants. — Lutheran Observer. 



DISCOURSE 



IN COMMEMORATION OF 



THE GLORIOUS REFORMATION 



SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN SYNOD 
OF WEST PENNSYLVANIA, 



S. S. SCHMUCKER, D.D. 

PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
AT GETTYSBURG. 



PUBLISHED BY SYNOD. 



THIRD EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS. 



NEW YORK : 

GOULD & NEWMAN. 
PHILADELPHIA: HENRY PERKINS. 

1838. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by 

Gould & Newman, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 

of New York. 



STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON, 
PHILADELPHIA. 



ST 



PREFACE. 



The following discourse was prepared by appointment 
of the Ev. Lutheran Synod of West Pennsylvania, in 
accordance with a resolution of that body, loudly called 
for by the signs of the times, recommending that a 
discourse on the Reformation be annually delivered by 
each member of Synod before the people of his charge, 
and resolving that one should annually be delivered 
before the Synod, on the same topic. 

In relinquishing his manuscript to the Synod for pub- 
lication, the writer acted under the conviction, that the 
real character of popery, according to the theory of its 
unalterable canons, which are carried into execution 
wherever papists have entire power, is but imperfectly 
known by our American citizens. He regrets, that in 
presenting the features of this interesting subject, he 
was unavoidably led to refer to the corruptions of a 
church, some of whose members are found in our own 
community, with whom, he and his brethren are in daily 
habits of friendly intercourse. This feeling is the more 
sensibly experienced, as he believes the great body of 
our native Catholics to be as true friends to our coun- 
try as the mass of our citizens generally ; and believes 
them not only innocent of any design against our liber- 
ties, but even unacquainted with the long catalogue of 
incidents in the history of their church, by which the 
1* v 



VI PREFACE. 

popes and priests have for twelve centuries past proved 
themselves the enemies of human liberty, civil and re- 
ligious ; unacquainted, generally, with those dangerous 
principles in the canons and decrees of their church, by 
which their priesthood were actuated in their former 
persecutions, and in conformity with which they may 
reasonably be expected to destroy the present liberties 
of both Protestants and Catholics, unless the eyes of 
the community are opened in time. Yet, as he will 
make no statements unsustained by good authority, he 
cannot be responsible, if it shall appear that popery is 
a corruption of true apostolical Christianity ; that the 
Romish priests have generally been enemies to the 
liberty of their own members, as well as of Protes- 
tants; and that the Roman Catholic church at this 
day, and in our own country, avows principles hostile 
to the rights of man and the liberties of the land, to 
which our Catholic fellow citizens have unconsciously 
assented whenever they professed indefinitely, to be- 
lieve as Holy mother church believes. Our Catholic 
friends ought rather to unite with us in the denuncia- 
tion of principles, which are alike repugnant to their 
feelings of natural right, inconsistent with the future 
security of their own liberties, as well as ours, and 
adverse to the declarations of God's holy word. 

S. S. SCHMUCKER. 

TheoL Seminary, Gettysburg, Oct, 13, 1837. 



DISCOURSE, &c. 



When, in the course of human events, we 
behold a people emerge from slavery, and 
" assume, among the powers of earth, the 
separate and equal station, to which the laws 
of nature and of nature's God entitle them, M 
the sight is one of no ordinary interest j for 
slavery is odious, the civil rights and privi- 
leges of a nation are valuable, and new scope 
is given for the development of mind in the 
prosecution of moral, social and political prin- 
ciples. But, my brethren, should we behold 
a revolution, in which the yoke of bondage 
is thrown off, not by one people, but in rapid 
succession, by a whole family of nations, and 
that yoke not only one of civil, but also of 
religious bondage, the spectacle would rise 
to incalculably greater interest ; because the 
eifects are far more extensive, the principles 
involved far more elevated, and the privi- 
leges conferred such as appertain, not only 
to the temporal, but also to the eternal inte- 

7 



rests of men. Such was the glorious Refor- 
mation of the sixteenth century, effected by 
God himself, not miraculously, but in accord- 
ance with the analogies of his Providence, 
through a band of intrepid, noble-minded, 
yet imperfect men. The fruits, both civil 
and religious, of this Revolution, we, in 
these United States, most richly enjoy ; but 
its origin and incidents, we are prone too 
often to forget, and too seldom to inculcate 
on the popular mind. 

? Tis little more than three hundred years, 
since Luther,* confessedly the most promi- 
nent of these moral heroes, the chieftain of 
this Spartan band, was born ; and about six 
weeks afterwards his illustrious coadjutor, 
Zuingle,t first saw the light. At that time all 
the civilized nations of Europe — Germany, 
France, England, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, 
Portugal, Italy, &c. &c, however diverse 
their languages, and habits, and political 
interests and institutions, were consolidated 
into one religious despotism, having one man , 

* Luther was born Nov. 10th, 1483. 
f Zuingle was born Jan. 1st, 1484. 



the pope at Rome, the pretended vicegerent 
of Christ on earth, at his head ! Papal Rome 
was then the mistress of the earth, in a far 
more important sense than in the days of 
her pagan glory, when she swayed the scep- 
tre of political dominion, but suffered her 
vanquished foes to worship their own gods. 
Then she controlled civil interests and out- 
ward acts, now she gave laws to the intel- 
lect of half the known world, regulated their 
social intercourse, prescribed their religious 
duties, and made her power felt in the inmost 
recesses of the soul. The pretended succes- 
sor of St. Peter, still claimed the right 

" Of raising monarchs to their thrones, 
Or sinking them with equal ease !" 

Forgetting that " no man can forgive sins 
but God only,"* he sacrilegiously pretended 
that like " the Son of man, he had power on 
earth, to forgive sins."t And when thwarted 
in his purposes, he claimed the right of plac- 

* Mark 2: 7. Luke 5: 21. Ephes. 4: 32. Psalm 
130: 4. Isaiah 43: 25. 44: 22. Jer. 50: 20. 
f Matth. 9: 6. 



10 

ing whole nations under papal interdict, and 
thus as he pretended, and an ignorant, super- 
stitious people believed, of closing the gates 
of heaven against them ! 

Such was the galling yoke of spiritual 
tyranny under which the civilized world 
was groaning, when He, who purchased the 
church with his own blood, and in prophetic 
vision revealed to John, the downfall of Ba- 
bylon, the mother of harlots, sent deliver- 
ance. Now, how is she fallen ! Stript of 
her most valuable dominions, and wooed 
with little ardour by her flatterers that re- 
main ! Now she is seen begging favour at 
the feet of monarchs, who once trembled at 
her nod, and seeking by a desperate effort 
in this new world, to retrieve the losses and 
recover from the shocks inflicted on her by 
the still lingering effects of the Reformation 
in the old. That Reformation stands unique 
on the tablets of universal history ; there has 
been no other equal to it, and there cannot 
be. For the papal hierarchy will never 
regain such a colossal magnitude, nor such 
despotic sway over the civilized world ; and 
the nations of Europe will never again bow 



11 

to such an iron yoke. That marvellous and 
wide-spread revolution in the church stands 
authenticated as the peculiar work of God, 
and exhibits the most brilliant displays of 
his providential guidance, as well as verifi- 
cations of the promise : " Lo, I am with 
you always, even to the end of the world." 

The period for this event was wisely chosen 
by the Head of the Church, 

As changes in the character of individuals 
and of nations are by the laws of mind ge- 
nerally gradual ; so the meridian light of 
the Reformation did not immediately burst 
in upon the midnight gloom of the dark 
ages. The two centuries preceding the Re- 
formation may be regarded as the dawn of 
that glorious day, as preparatory and intro- 
ductory to it. In Prague, the capital of 
Bohemia, not more than about seventy 
miles from Wittenberg, Conrad Stickna,* and 
John Milicz,t had publicly inveighed against 
the corruption of both priests and people, 

* Obiit. A. D. 1369. f A - D - 1374 obiit 



12 

and especially against the mendicant friars, 
a century and a half before the Reformation 
of Luther ; and Matthias von Janow, the 
confessor of Charles IV., had even gone so 
far in several instances, as to administer the 
holy supper in both kinds, although he was 
soon compelled to recant. Wickliffe in 
England, and Peter d'Ailly, Chancellor of 
the University at Paris, bore similar testi- 
mony against Romish corruption. 

In the century immediately preceding the 
Reformation, Huss and Jerome arose as wit- 
nesses for the truth under very favourable 
circumstances. They dwelt in the same city 
where Stickna and Milicz had taught before 
them. And the University of Prague, in 
which they were professors, was at that time 
the most celebrated in all Europe, except 
that in Paris, and was frequented by thou- 
sands of young men from every part of 
Germany. John Gerson also distinguished 
himself as an advocate for reform. Ac- 
cordingly a partial Reformation had com- 
menced in Bohemia. A liturgy in the ver- 
nacular tongue was there extensively used, 
and the council convened at Basil, in 1433, 



13 

even sanctioned its use, and allowed the 
Bohemians to administer the cup to the 
laity. Nor were the views of these Re- 
formers entirely superficial. If we concen- 
trate the different rays of their light, they 
will amount to a distinct preparative to the 
glorious Reformation which followed. The 
positions maintained by the Hussites and 
Taborites of that century, were the unre- 
stricted preaching of God's word ; the resto- 
ration of the cap to the laity ; that the priest- 
hood should be divested of its secular power 
and wealth ; the introduction of a more rigid 
and scriptural church discipline ; the aboli- 
tion of monasteries, and images in worship ; 
the rejection of the doctrine of Purgatory, 
and of Auricular Confession. This light, 
though circumscribed in its influence, being 
confined to Bohemia, served, in connexion 
with scattered rays in other countries, to 
prepare the Catholic world for the meridian 
splendour of the Reformation, and doubt- 
less assisted even Luther himself in inves- 
tigating the foundations of Papacy. 

Such was the state of things when Martin 
Luther was born, Nov. 10, 1483, a year 
2 



14 

which witnessed alike the unabated preten- 
sions, and the waning power of Romanism, 
in the unexecuted papal bull and interdict 
against the Republic of Venice ; and in the 
memorable Auto de Fe, at Seville in Spain, 
which soon succeeded, at which a number 
of individuals who rejected some of the Ro- 
mish errors, were publicly committed to the 
flames by the misnamed holy Inquisition. 
Thus we see, that the fearful and wide- 
spreading machinery of Papal despotism, 
had indeed been not a little impaired by the 
friction of ages, and some of its wheels no 
longer revolved in effective concert with the 
whole ; but it remained for the monk of 
Wittenberg, placing his lever on the fulcrum 
of the Bible, to ungear the whole machine, 
and shatter a large portion of it to atoms ! 

The period from Luther's birth till the 
public commencement of the Reformation 
on the 31st of October, 1517, was rich in 
events preparatory to the great conflict. 
The irreligious and profligate character of 
the popes was well calculated still farther 
to impair the moral energy of the whole 
ecclesiastical machinery ; for though uncon- 



15 

verted men will be satisfied with uncon- 
verted ministers, there is a general sense of 
moral propriety pervading our race, which 
demands of the priests of our holy religion 
exemption from flagrant immorality. But 
the popes of this period were a disgrace to 
humanity. Innocent VIII. and in a still 
more flagrant manner, Alexander VI. who 
was himself the illegitimate son of Pope 
Calixtus III. squandered the papal treasures 
on the offspring of their licentiousness. 
Alexander VI. is styled by an eminent his- 
torian " a monster of a man, inferior to no 
one of the most abandoned tyrants of anti- 
quity."* And Julius II. was a restless, 
anbitious soldier, who, though the pretended 
vicegerent of the Prince of Peace, involved 
in war successively, the Venetians, the 
Swiss, the Spaniards, and the French. If 
such was the character of the Holy Fathers 
themselves, there can be nothing surprising 
in the corruption of the great body of the 
priests and people, and nothing dubious in 
the alleged necessity of a reformation both 

* Murdock's Mosheim, vol. iii. p. 9. ; 



16 

in the head and members of the Romish 
church. Indeed, so glaring was this neces- 
sity, that it had been long acknowledged by 
priests, and councils, and emperors, and was 
not directly denied by the popes themselves. 
As early as 1409, the council of Pisa de- 
creed a Reformation of the church in her 
head and members ; and let it be remem- 
bered, that this was a general council, at- 
tended by twenty-four cardinals, a great 
many bishops, archbishops, and other pre- 
lates, three hundred doctors of divinity and 
of canon law, and representatives of thir- 
teen universities. The same necessity was 
reiterated by three or four subsequent coun- 
cils in this century, but the work itself was 
as often defeated by the intrigue of the 
popes, who did not relish the salutary dis- 
cipline, aimed at their infallible holinesses ! 
Nor should we forget to enumerate, among 
the preparatives of the Reformation, the re- 
vival of learning in the West, the increased 
facility of influencing the intellect of Europe 
by the recently invented art of printing, and 
the emigration of many of the Greek literati, 
after the capture of Constantinople by Mo- 



17 

hamed II. in 1453, and the downfall of the 
Greek empire. The light of science and 
literature is ever hostile to superstition and 
intellectual bondage. Numerous writers had 
thus sprung up, who constituted a liberal 
party,* and were strenuously opposed by the 
friends of ignorance and superstition. They 
ridiculed the vices and ignorance of the 
church and priesthood, pouring into their 
moral wounds the most mordacious salt of 
satire ; but they were destitute of that moral 
principle necessary to bear them through 
the perils and privations of the Reformation, 
and, like their leader Erasmus, turned trai- 
tors to the cause in the day of fiery trial. 
Nor was this surprising. For, although the 
popular reverence for the papal hierarchy 
had much abated, the mightiest monarchs 
of Europe regarded the popes as formidable 
enemies, on account of their influence on the 
oath of allegiance of every Catholic subject. 
The few individuals who had attempted to 

* To this party belonged Reuchlin, Erasmus, Park- 
heimer, Herman von Busch, Ulrich von Hutten, and 
all the more enlightened minds of the age, 



18 

carry forward the standard of reform, were 
unceremoniously crushed beneath the thun- 
derbolts of the Vatican. The blood of Huss 
and Jerome yet proclaimed aloud the ten- 
dencies of the holy mother towards refor- 
mers, and the inquisitorial agonies and dying 
groans of the pious, but enthusiastic Savo- 
narola* of whom Luther remarked that 

* "Jerome Savonarola was born at Ferrara, Oct. 12, 
1452; religiously educated, and early distinguished 
for genius and learning. His father intended him 
for his own profession, that of physic ; but he dis 
liked it; and, unknown to his parents, became a Do- 
minican monk, A. D. 1474. For a time, he taught 
philosophy and metaphysics ; and then was made a 
preacher and confessor. He soon laid aside the hear- 
ing of confessions, and devoted himself wholly to 
preaching, in which he was remarkably interesting 
and successful. In 1489, he went to Florence, where 
his preaching produced quite a reformation of morals. 
He attacked vice, infidelity, and false religion, with 
the utmost freedom, sparing no age or sex, and no 
condition of men, monks, priests, popes, princes, or 
common citizens. His influence was almost bound- 
less. But Florence was split into political factions ; 
and Savonarola did not avoid the danger. He was 
ardent, eloquent, and so enthusiastic, as almost to 
believe, and actually to represent what he taught, as 



19 

"Christ had canonized him" though pa- 
pists burned him ;* served as a beacon to 
deter others from the paths of reform. 

Amid these circumstances it was, that 
God, in his own time, raised up an illustrious 
band of reformers, in the very heart of the 
church, who, endowed with the extraordi- 

being communicated to him by revelation. The ad- 
verse faction accused him to the pope, who sum* 
moned him to Rome. Savonarola would not go ; and 
was ordered to cease preaching. A Franciscan in- 
quisitor was sent to confront him. The people pro- 
tected him. But at length, vacillating about putting 
his cause to the test of a fire ordeal, he lost his popu- 
larity in a measure. His enemies seized him by 
force, put him to the rack, and extorted from him 
some concessions, which they interpreted as confes- 
sions of guilt ; and then strangled him, burned his 
body, and threw the ashes into the river. Thus he 
died, May 23, 1498. — His character has been assailed 
and defended, most elaborately, and by numerous 
persons both Catholics and Protestants. His writ- 
ings were almost all in Italian. They consist of 
more than three hundred sermons, about fifty tracts 
and treatises, and a considerable number of letters ; 
all displaying genius and piety, and some of them 
superior intellect." 

* Amnion's Geshichte der Homiletik, vol. i. p. 183. 



20 

nary power called for by the occasion, de- 
clared open war against her manifold cor- 
ruptions. Germany was the theatre on 
which this great conflict was commenced, 
and Luther the first of the warriors who 
took the field. God had by the special 
teachings of his Providence and Spirit, tu- 
tored him for the work, and on the 31st 
October, 1517, after Tetzel, a Dominican 
friar, had been vending the papal indul- 
gences, in the vicinity of Wittenberg, with 
the most barefaced impudence, Luther in 
the fear of God, raised the standard of Re- 
formation, by affixing to the church-door, 
his ninety-jive theses against indulgences. 
From that day the commencement of the 
Reformation is usually dated, the day, 
which has ordinarily been celebrated in com- 
memoration of that glorious event. Having 
thus placed himself in opposition to the 
holy mother church, without entertaining 
the least idea of the extent and importance 
of the work which God designed to accom- 
plish by him, Luther devoted himself with 
increased ardour to the continued study of 
that sacred volume, a copy of which had 



21 



providentially fallen into his hands ten years 
before. The change in his own views was 
gradual, and he was simultaneously as well 
the subject as the agent of the Reformation. 
In the preface to his works, written eighteen 
years after this time, he remarks : " Let all 
who read my books remember that I am one 
of those, who, as St. Augustine says, improv- 
ed myself by writing and by teaching others, 
and belong not to those who in the twink- 
ling of an eye were transformed from no- 
thing into learned doctors."* And who 
does not behold the hand of Providence in 
this ? As his publications were, success- 
ively, one but a step in advance of the other, 
his former readers could the more easily 
enter into the spirit of each, and bear the 
gradations of light successively revealed. 
This circumstance, at the same time, ac- 
counts for the fact, that many of his earlier 
productions contain doctrines which he 
abandoned in the latter part of his life. 

The successive incidents of the great ec- 
clesiastical revolution, which grew out of 

* Seckendorf, p. 89. 



22 

this small commencement, we cannot stop 
to detail. Suffice it to say, that in less than 
two weeks, Luther's Theses had traversed 
nearly all Germany ; the attention of the 
greater part of Europe was soon arrested, 
and remained fixed on this conflict. For 
thirteen years was the work of reform car- 
ried forward, until all the prominent cor- 
ruptions of Romanism were successively 
exposed, and the Reformation attained some 
maturity in Germany, as exhibited in the 
Confession presented to the Diet at Augs- 
burg in 1530. But the conflict was not yet 
at an end. Various and disastrous were the 
persecutions and trials, which the Protestant 
princes and their people, who avowed those 
doctrines, had to endure from the intole- 
rance of the Pope, and of the Emperor at 
his instigation, for twenty-five years more, 
until the 25th of September, 1555, nine years 
after Luther's death, when the pacification 
of Augsburg for the first time gave imperial 
permission to the Protestants, to worship 
God after the dictates of their own con- 
sciences. 

But no sooner had the Reformation com- 



menced in Germany, than it began to spread 
in other countries, with electric rapidity, and 
the intellect of all Europe felt the shock. 
Two years after Luther published his The- 
ses, Ulrick Zwingle, one of the most learned 
and distinguished reformers, whose personal 
views of Papal corruptions had even been 
in advance of Luther's, also began the work 
of public reformation, at Zurich in Switzer- 
land, which he prosecuted with great ability 
and success, until 1531, when he lost his life 
in a battle between the Swiss Protestants 
and the Catholics who invaded their coun- 
try. Into Sweden the Reformation was 
introduced by Olaus Petri, a disciple of Lu- 
ther, powerfully seconded by Gustavus Vasa, 
from 1523 to 1527. In Denmark also, the 
power of the papal hierarchy was destroyed 
at an early day. About the same time nu- 
merous advocates of Luther's doctrines were 
found in Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, 
Britain and the Netherlands. In England 
papacy received a fatal blow in 1533, from 
Henry VIII., who had before so zealously 
defended the holy mother church against 
Luther, as to acquire the title of "Defender 



24 

of the Faith," still retained by his success- 
ors. Into Scotland the Reformed religion 
was introduced mainly by that inflexible 
and distinguished servant of God, John 
Knox, about the year 1559. Nor can we 
pass unnoticed among the honoured instru- 
ments of divine providence, John Calvin, 
who, though not the means of originally 
introducing the Reformation into any coun- 
try, exerted a most extensive influence on 
all the Reformed churches of Europe, and 
contributed more than any other man, to 
confer order, maturity and stability on them 
all. Commencing his public labours in Ge- 
neva, in 1536, about twenty years after 
Luther arose, he continued, for thirty years, 
by his correspondence and publications, to 
advance the cause of Reformation through- 
out different portions of Europe ; so that for 
learning, influence and usefulness, he may 
be classed at the side of Luther himself. 

But instead of detailing the circumstances 
of this glorious work of God, to which we 
owe our liberty, civil and religious, let us 
contemplate a few features by which this 
Reformation is distinguished, that a more 



25 

distinct impression of its value may rest 
upon our minds. 

I. The first feature to which we will ad- 
vert, is that it gave us free access to the 
uncorrupted fountain of truth and duty, 
God's holy word, as the only infallible 
rule of faith and practice to us. 

Well knowing the treachery of human 
memory, God, eveh under the Old Testa- 
ment dispensation, inscribed the decalogue 
on tablets of stone, and Moses his inspired 
servant, made a record of^ his other instruc- 
tions, which were to be publicly read in the 
stated worship of the people from generation 
to generation, and to be inculcated on their 
children in the house and by the way. In 
like manner the inspired apostles, whom the 
Saviour had commissioned to publish the 
gospel to all nations, knowing that the holy 
religion of the Saviour was designed for all 
generations, reduced its facts and doctrines 
to writing. The design of this act would 
be evident from the nature of the case, but 
several of the inspired penmen have also 
distinctly expressed it. " These things," says 
St. John, "are written, that ye might believe 
3 



26 

that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and 
that believing ye might have life through his 
name."* Before the New Testament books 
were written, the Saviour commanded to 
"search the scriptures" of the Old Testa- 
ment, and not the traditions or oral reports, 
which he condemned as tending to make 
void the sacred word. Paul says: "All 
scripture, that is, the sacred writings, are 
given by inspiration of God, and are profita- 
ble for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, 
for instruction in righteousness: that the 
man of God may be perfect, thoroughly 
furnished unto all good works." This Paul 
said in the year A. D. 65, at which time all 
the books of the New Testament had been 
published, except the writings of John, the 
epistle of Jude and 2 Peter. And although 
there was an order of men appointed to 
publish the gospel to all creatures; these 
men were required to study the scriptures,t 
and teach according to them.J Christians 
were taught to beware of false teachers,§ 

* John 20: 31, and also Paul. f 1 Tim. 4: 15. 

tGal. 1:8. § 2 Pet. 2: 1,2. 



27 

to search the scriptures daily to ascertain 
whether these things were so/'* and if even 
an angel from heaven should come publish- 
ing any other gospel than that taught by the 
apostles, he should be accursed.! But in- 
stead of adhering to the word of God as the 
only infallible rule of faith and practice, the 
Church of Rome had, for several centuries 
prior to the Reformation, elevated tradition, 
and the decrees of councils and popes, to an 
equality with God's word. Their reason for 
this unhallowed conduct may easily be in- 
ferred from the confession then made, and 
recently reiterated by a papal writer^ in this 
country, that the doctrines and rites of their 
church could not be proved from the scrip- 
tures alone. The earliest records of these 
unauthorized additions to Christianity were 
of course not found in the pages of the Bible, 
but in writers of the age in which those 
unscriptural doctrines were added to their 

* Acts 17: 11. 

f Gal. 1:8. Rev. 22: 18, 19. John 5: 39. 1 Thess. 
5: 27. Eph. 6: 17. 

% Mr. Hughes, in controversy with Dr. Breckin- 
ridge. 



28 

creed ; or, in the canons of the councils who 
first approved them. The authority of these 
writers and councils was therefore magni- 
fied at the expense of God's word, during 
centuries before the Reformation, whenever 
any necessity roused them from their slum- 
ber of licentiousness and ignorance to at- 
tempt the proof of their corrupt system. 
But so far as we have been able to learn, 
no council before that of Trent, a few years 
after the Reformation, had even formally 
decreed the entire equality of human tradi- 
tions and decrees of councils with God's 
holy word. Yet the Bible itself had for 
centuries been almost an unknown book. 
Select portions only were used in worship, 
and thousands of ministers lived and died 
without having seen a copy of the entire 
scriptures. When Luther himself providen- 
tially found one in the library of the convent, 
he was surprised to perceive that the few 
passages read in the service, did not con- 
tain the whole scriptures ! ! Pelican, one 
of the reformers, declares, that at the time 
of the Reformation, a Greek Testament 
could not be purchased in all Germany for 



29 

any price ! Scarcely any ministers of the 
age had a critical knowledge of the Bible, 
and when Luther arose, there was not an 
individual in the papal world, not even in 
all the University of Paris, who could con- 
front him on the ground of scripture ! But 
the Reformation and the Bible went hand 
in hand. It was by the Bible that God 
commenced the reformation in the heart of 
Luther in the convent, and by translation 
of the Bible into the vernacular tongues, 
did Luther and the other blessed instru- 
ments of God propagate the great work 
throughout Europe. This Avas so well un- 
derstood by the Romanists themselves, that 
as Sarpi, their own historian, informs us, 
one of the reasons urged at the council of 
Trent for interdicting the Bible to the laity 
was, "that the Lutherans had succeeded 
only with those, who had been accustomed 
to read the Scriptures."* And when com- 
pelled by the progressive illumination of the 
age to make some appeal to the "law and 
the testimony," one of the arguments as- 

* Sarpi, Lib. ii. § 52. (Cramp 53.) 
3* 



30 



signed by that council for adopting the cor- 
rupt Latin translation instead of the original^ 
was, " unless the Vulgate were declared to 
be divine in every part, immense advantages 
would be yielded to the Lutherans, and in- 
numerable heresies, (as they styled the views 
of the Reformers,) would arise to trouble 
the (Romish) church."* Accordingly the 
only Bible to which our Catholic friends 
have access even at this day, by consent of 
their spiritual guides, is this corrupted trans- 
lation, or translations of this translation, 
which after having been carefully corrected, 
and pronounced immaculate by pope Six- 
tus V. in 1590, was two years subsequently 
altered in about 2000 places by pope Cle- 
ment VIII. the changes in some cases af- 
fecting whole verses, and in many others 
giving a decidedly contradictory significa- 
tion.! This translation moreover adds se- 
veral entire books which do not belong to 
the word of God at all. And if it were in 
the power of the Roman pontiff and his 
priests to banish the genuine word of God 

* Ibid. p. 52, 53. 

f Cramp's Textbook, p. 53. 



31 

from the world, they would gladly do it. 
Else why are they so bitterly opposed to 
the operations of Protestant Bible Societies, 
whose object is to place the word of God 
faithfully translated from the original, and 
without note or comment, into every fa- 
mily ? Else how could the late pope Pius 
VII. in his reply to the inquiries of the Po- 
lish bishops, what course they should pursue 
in regard to Bible societies, use such lan- 
guage as this : "We have been truly shock- 
ed, (says his holiness,) at this crafty device, 
(namely the distribution of the word of God 
by these societies,) by which the very foun- 
dations of religion are undermined. For it 
is evident that the holy scriptures when cir- 
culated in the vulgar tongue, have through 
the temerity of men, produced more harm 
than benefit. Continue, therefore, diligent- 
ly to warn the people entrusted to your care, 
that they fall not into the snares which are 
prepared for their everlasting ruin, (or in 
other words, that they receive not the Bible, 
offered them by these societies !")* Ought 

* Protestant, Vol. i. pp. 256-258. 



32 

not every enlightened Catholic to suspect 
either the capacity or fidelity of those reli- 
gious teachers, who are afraid to let the 
doctrines which they teach as the truth of 
God, be tested by the word of God ? 

How different is the conduct of Protestant 
ministers ! How different the state of things 
in Protestant churches ! Since the glorious 
Reformation, the original scriptures are the 
text-book in the studies of ministers, and are 
accessible to all of every profession who are 
versed in the languages in which they are 
written. They have been faithfully trans- 
lated into all the different languages of 
Christendom, and into a vast multitude of 
heathen tongues, and distributed in millions 
of copies throughout the countries of the 
Reformation. The Protestant minister is 
confessedly the expounder of the word of 
God, the Protestant layman is taught to 
search the scriptures like the nobler Be- 
reans, to "see whether these things be so." 
The grand, the cardinal principle of both is, 
"the Bible, the Bible is the religion of Pro- 
testants !" Fellow Christian, do you tri- 
umph in the conviction that the criteria by 



33 

which you judge your hopes of eternal life, 
are based not on the ipse dixit of popes and 
councils, nor on the uncertain tradition of 
fallible men, but on the infallible word of 
God ? Remember you are indebted for this 
privilege to the blessed Reformation, and 
let your gratitude ascend to heaven for this 
favour ! Do you make that word the man 
of your counsel, and the guide of your life ; 
in every time of doubt or difficulty do you 
seek instruction of God himself by resort- 
ing "to the law and the testimony ?" For- 
get not that the Reformation conferred on 
you this delightful privilege. Does this 
word enable you daily to hold communion 
with those men of God, who wrote as the 
Holy Ghost inspired ? Do you peruse the 
predictions of the ancient prophets, or read 
the very letters which the apostles wrote to 
the first churches, thus enjoying the privi- 
leges of the primitive Christians ? Do you 
find the precious Bible evinced a book di- 
vinely its elevating, transforming, beatify- 
ing influence on your soul ? Then forget 
not, that for all these high and holy privi- 
leges, your gratitude is due to the glorious 



34 



Reformation by which God delivered our 
fathers from papal darkness and supersti- 
tion. 



II. The Reformation has delivered the 
church from a multitude of doctrinal 
and practical corruptions. 

Instead of worshipping God through the 
pretended mediation of angels, or the Vir- 
gin Mary, and other mortals termed saints, 
as is done even at this day in the Romish 
church, and offering to them a species of 
worship, Protestants have restored to them 
the privilege of worshipping God and him 
alone, through the divine Saviour. Pope 
Pius IV. whose creed is embraced in the 
standards of the whole Romish church, 
employs this revolting language expressive 
of the Catholic faith : "I also believe that 
the saints, who reign with Christ, are to be 
worshipped and prayed to."* The multi- 

* Creed of Pius IV. Art. 20. Concil. Trident. 
Sess. 25. de Invocat. Catechism. Rom. Part III. 
Ch. 2. 



35 



tude of these pretended saints is almost such, 
that no man can number them ; their works 
of piety and their stupendous miracles are 
treasured up in fifty-four folio volumes for 
the edification of the children of the holy 
mother church ! Some of these saints, it 
is believed, never existed on earth except 
in the imagination of the biographers who 
fabricated the legends of them. Such are 
Saint Longinus, who is said to have been 
the Roman soldier that, pierced the spear 
into the Saviour's side on the cross ; the 
gigantic St. Christopher, who is reputed to 
have carried Christ across an arm of the 
sea ;* St. Amphibolus, who was only the 
cloak of Albans, the British protomartyr ! !t 
Some of these saints were murderers, and 
traitors,;); such as the murderers of the Hen- 
rys of France, of the Prince of Orange, and 
Garnet of the gunpowder plot.§ Others are 

* Home on Popery, p. 16. 

f Protestant, vol. i. p. 343. 

:j: Brownlee's Popery an Enemy, &c, 152-3. 

§ Of this desperate scheme of papal bigotry, Dr. 
Mosheim gives the following brief account: — "All 
the resources of inventive genius and refined policy, 



36 

by the best historians ranked among the 
most unprincipled, and notoriously corrupt 
sinners of their age. Such, to specify but one 

all the efforts of insinuating craft and audacious re- 
bellion, were employed to bring back Great Britain 
and Ireland under the yoke of Rome. But all these 
attempts were without effect. About the beginning 
of this century (1605) a set of desperate and execra- 
ble wretches, in whose breast the suggestions of 
bigotry and the hatred of the Protestant religion had 
suppressed the feelings of justice and humanity, were 
instigated by three Jesuits, of whom Garnet, the su- 
perior of the Society in England, was the chief, to 
form the most horrid plot that is known in the annals 
of history. The design of this conspiracy was no- 
thing less than to destroy, at one blow, king James I., 
the prince of Wales, and both houses of Parliament, 
by the explosion of an immense quantity of gunpow- 
der (thirty-six barrels !*) which they concealed for that 
purpose, in the vaults under the house of Lords. The 
sanguinary bigots concerned in it, imagined, that, as 
soon as this horrible deed was performed, they would 
be at full liberty to restore popery to its former credit, 
and substitute it in place of the Protestant religion. 
This odious conspiracy, which was providentially dis- 
covered, when it was rife for execution, is commonly 
known in Britain under the denomination of the Gun- 
powder treason" — Vol. iii. p. 463 — 464. 

* Russell's Modem Europe, vol. ii. p. 47. 



37 

other, was Saint Gregory VII. named Hil- 
debrand, of the eleventh century, who, in 
order to raise the church above all human 
authority, to separate the clergy from all 
those social ties by which they were united 
to the people, and to convert them into a 
kind of standing army, whose entire inte- 
rest it would be to obey implicitly the papal 
mandate, forcibly introduced the oft-attempt- 
ed, and commended celibacy of the clergy, 
thus impiously denouncing the matrimonial 
relation, and separating hundreds of husbands 
from their lawful wives, fathers from their 
children, whilst it is notorious that he him- 
self was living in illicit amours with Ma- 
tilda, a very opulent and powerful Italian 
princess.* What worshipper of the true 
God can reflect without horror on the idea of 
paying religious veneration to such monsters 
of iniquity ! As well might we return to 
the era of Pagan Rome, and unite in the 
worship of her Jupiter and Juno, her Venus, 
and her Mars ! But blessed be God, the 
Reformation has restored to us the primitive 

* Mosheim, Hist. 11th Cent. 
4 



38 

and precious doctrines of the gospel, has 
taught us " that there is but one God, and 
one mediator between God and man, the 
man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ran- 
som for all.*'-* Neither is there salvation in 
any other, for there is no other name under 
heaven given among men, whereby we 
must be saved.t Blessed be God, we now 
know, that " if any man sin, we have an 
advocate with the Father," who is, not the 
Virgin Mary, nor an angel, nor a real, or 
pretended saint, but is "Jesus Christ the 
righteous, who is the propitiation for our 
sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins 
of the whole world.":): Instead of believing 
that " the good works of believers are truly 
and properly meritorious, and fully worthy 
of eternal life ;"§ the Reformation, by re- 
storing to us the good word of God, has 
taught us to despair of the filthy rags of our 
own righteousness, to believe that "by grace 
we are saved, through faith, and that not 

* 1 Tim. 2: 5, 6. f Acts 4: 12. % 1 John 2: || 2. 
§ Con. Trid, Sess. 6. chap. 16. Can. 32. 



39 

of ourselves ; it is the gift of God ; not of 
works, lest any man should boast."* 

Instead of the mutilated and corrupted 
sacraments of the Romish church, the Re- 
formation has restored to us the primitive, 
simple ordinances of the gospel. The papal 
priests refuse to give the cup to the laity, 
whilst the Saviour gave it to all, and as if 
foreseeing the corruptions of after ages, added 
the express injunction : "drink ye all of this 
cup :" for he appended no such injunction in 
reference to the bread. The Romish church 
believe that the bread and wine in the eu- 
charist are no longer bread and wine, but 
are converted by the consecration of the 
priest into the real material body and blood 
of the Saviour, a doctrine contradicted by 
common sense, refuted by the concurrent 
testimony of all our senses of touch, of taste, 
of smell, and of sight. The Reformation has 
taught us to regard the ordinance not as a 
renewed sacrifice or mass ; but as a mnemo- 
nic ordinance to commemorate the dying 
love of the Saviour, and to serve as a pledge 

* Ephes. 2: 8, 9. 



40 

of his spiritual presence and blessing on all 
worthy participants. The Romish church 
has also, since the days of Peter Lombard, 
in the twelfth century, added five other sa- 
craments to the two instituted by our Lord, 
viz., Confirmation, (Protestants do not hold 
confirmation as a sacrament) Penance, Or- 
ders, Matrimony and Extreme Unction. 

Instead of vainly seeking remission of 
sins from priests and papal indulgences, 
the Reformation has taught us that "no 
man can forgive sin but God only "* and 
that none but "the Son of man hath power 
on earth to forgive sin."t The Romish pope 
had not only attempted to wrest this preroga- 
tive from the God of heaven ;± but had ac- 
tually converted his pretended power into an 
ordinary article of merchandise ; had pub- 
lished to the papal world a tariff of human 
crimes, affixing to each the price for which 
it would certainly be pardoned, or rather, as 
it may be styled, the expense at which 

* Mark 2: 7. | Luke 5: 21. 

% The decree of the Council of Trent explicitly 
decides, that priests forgive sins judicially and not 
declaratively. 



41 

it might be committed ! ! This power of 
selling indulgences was not even claimed by 
the popes prior to the twelfth century, much 
less was it granted them by the Saviour. It 
was doubtless and still is one of the most 
fearful, soul-destroying corruptions of Chris- 
tianity ever perpetrated on earth. It made 
it the interest of pope and priest, that men 
should commit crimes frequently and conti- 
nually. The more vicious and corrupt the 
people, the greater the profits of the priests. 
It is obvious that in the hands of a priest- 
hood sufficiently ignorant of God's word, 
sufficiently licentious, and destitute of spi- 
rituality to practise such a system, it must 
have a powerful tendency to obliterate from 
the popular mind all just sense of the guilt 
of sin, all conviction of what rendered the 
psalmist's transgressions most painful to him, 
"against thee, thee only have I sinned, and 
done this evil in thy sight." 

Let it not be imagined that this soul-de- 
stroying practice belonged only to the dark 
ages. Even at this day as travellers inform 
lis, advertisements are put up in different 
Catholic countries of Europe, directing the 
4* 



42 

victim of priestly deception whither to bear 
his money in order to barter it for indul- 
gences ! ! No longer than the 24th of May, 
1824, did Pope Leo XII. himself issue a bull, 
pledging "the most plenary, and complete 
indulgence, remission, and pardon of all their 
sins," to such as during the ensuing year 
of Jubilee, would visit the churches of 
Rome and perform the prescribed ceremo- 
nies there ! ! 

Instead of a professed celibacy of the 
priests and nuns, accompanied by the most 
appalling scenes of licentiousness and moral 
pollution, the Reformation, through the 
Scriptures, has again taught the church, that 
marriage is an ordinance of God, "is honour- 
able in all," both priests and nuns, and is 
favourable in its tendency to chastity and 
every moral virtue. When we hear the 
Apostle Paul inculcating that a bishop, or 
minister, should be blameless, the husband of 
one wife ;* when we remember too that the 
apostle Peter, whom the Romanists are prone 
to cite as the first pope, was a married 

* 1 Tim. 3: 2; see also Titus 1: 8. 



43 

man ;* it is amazing that a church professing 
to follow the instructions of Christ and his 
apostles, could so directly in the face of the 
Scriptures, denounce what God enjoined, 
and even enact laws of absolute prohibition 
against those of the priesthood, who wished 
to honour the institution which God appoint- 
ed. But in reality the sacred volume had for 
ages before the Reformation been virtually 
suppressed, and the corrupt system of popery 
had gradually grown up whilst the Bible was 
really unknown to the priests and withheld 
from the people. Attempts were made in the 
earlier ages of Christianity, long before the 
existence of the papal hierarchy, to enjoin 
celibacy on the priesthood. The council of 
Nice, however, A. D. 335, through the influ- 
ence of a celebrated Christian sufferer, the 
one-eyed PaphnutiusJ rejected the growing 
error. But that memorable century had not 

* Matt. 8: 14. Luke 4: 38. 

f Socratis Histor. Lib. i. chap. 8. This celebrated 
man had one of his eyes bored out in the persecutions, 
and so much was he esteemed and beloved by the em- 
peror Constanti ne, that he is said often to have kissed 
the extinguished eye. 



44 



been closed when the bishop of Rome, Siri- 
cius (A. D. 385) and soon after several 
Western Synods, enjoined it with some suc- 
cess. The principal circumstance which in- 
troduced celibacy among the ministry at that 
time was, that it became customary to elect 
monks to the pastoral charge of churches, 
so that the monastic life began to be regard* 
ed as preparation for the ministry, and as 
monks had vowed celibacy, the matrimonial 
state was discouraged among the clergy, but 
could not be generally suppressed even in 
the Latin church, until the time of Gregory 
VII. in the 11th century. 

The natural consequences of this perver- 
sion of God's appointed laws, soon became 
manifest in the appalling scenes of corrup- 
tion and licentiousness, in which, according 
to contemporaneous Catholic writers, monks 
and nuns, priests, bishops and popes were 
alike implicated ! 

* [At an early day after the introduction 
of celibacy it became customary for the 
priests to keep single females in their houses 

* The paragraph included in [ ] was omitted in the 
delivery. 



45 

as professed religious sisters.* To suppress 
the disorders thus introduced by these pre- 
tended friends of celibacy, it was found ne- 
cessary to prohibit the priests from having 
any females in their houses, except their 
own mothers and sisters. But horrible to 
relate, from a decree of the Concil. Mo- 
guntiae, A. D. 888, we learn that some of 
them had children by their own sisters I* 
By a canon of the Concil. iEnhamense, 
A. D. 1 009, it is expressly asserted, that some 
of them had not only one, but even two and 
more women living with them ; that their vo- 
luptuous indulgences constituted their prin- 
cipal object of pursuit in life ; and that they 
did not blush to be engaged with prostitutes, 
even more publicly, more ostentatiously, 
more lasciviously, and more perseveringly 
than the most unprincipled vagrants " among 
the laity.^J Hundreds of thousands of young 

* The Mulieres subintroductae. See Gieseler, vol. i., 
and Mosheim, vol. i. 

f Canon 10, Mansi xviii. p. 67. See Gieseler's 
Hist. vol. ii. p. 112. 

X Gieseler's History, Amer. ed., 1836. Vol. ii. p. 
112. Omnes Deiministros,&c. See also, pp. 114, 276. 



46 

females were enticed into their nunneries 
under pretence of spending their life in re- 
ligious seclusion. These nunneries were 
almost invariably in the immediate vicinity 
of the institutions of the priests : and in 
different instances, where these establish- 
ments were torn down, subterranean pas- 
sages were discovered conducting from the 
one to the other ! ! Clemangis, a distin- 
guished French Catholic, who studied at 
Paris under the learned Gerson, and lived 
about fifty years before the time of Luther, 
gives such a description of the nunneries 
as cannot be repeated at large before this au- 
dience. After enumerating various particu- 
lars, he adds, "What else are these nunneries 
than houses of prostitution ? so that in our 
day for a female to take the veil, is the same ' 
as publicly to offer herself for prostitution/ 5 * 
Geo. Cassander, a Catholic writer, born a 
few years before the Reformation, testifies 
" that scarcely one could be found in a hun- 
dred of the priests who was not guilty of 
illicit commerce with females."! Many of 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 718. 
f Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 718 ; also Murdock's Mo- 
sheim; Vol. ii. p. 71. 



47 

the popes were among the most licentious 
and corrupt men to be found in the annals 
of human debauchery,* and Pope Paul III. 
even licensed brothels, for a regular sum of 
money.t] 

Such according to the testimony of Ro- 
mish writers themselves, was the condition 
of the church prior to the Reformation ! 
What gratitude is not due from every friend 
of virtue or religion, that these corruptions 
have been banished from at least a large 
portion of the Christian world. What gra- 
titude is due from every father and mother, 
that our eyes have been opened upon the 
corruption of these nunneries, that our 
daughters are no longer sent thither to be 
sacrificed to licentious priests ! With what 

* Examples of such popes may be found in M' Ga- 
vin's Protestant, Vol. ii. pp. 27, 28. 

f " In the third year of his papacy, Paul III. grant- 
ed a bull for publicly licensing brothels, and gave an 
indulgence for the commission of lewdness, provided 
the man paid a certain fine to the holy see, and the 
woman a yearly sum for her license, and entered her 
name into the public register. In the days of this 
pope, there are said to have been 45,000 such women 
in Rome," — Protestant, Vol. i. p. 141. 



48 

gratitude should we cherish the recollection 
of the glorious Reformation ! and how faith- 
fully should we labour by the dissemination 
of the word of God and of the spirit of piety 
among our fellow citizens of all descriptions 
to resist the progress of popery amongst us ! 
But may we not in charity doubt the jus- 
tice of the inference from the character of 
the Romish institutions and priesthood of 
former ages, to those of the present day ? 
Has not the Romish church itself been re- 
formed by the streams of light thrown around 
her by the Reformation ? With sincere de- 
light and with gratitude to God would we 
adopt this opinion in all its latitude, if truth 
permitted us. Some effect the Reformation 
has doubtless exerted on the Roman Catho- 
lic church. In Protestant countries and es- 
pecially in our own land, the native Catholic 
laymen are in general as moral as the mass 
of the community around them, and their 
priests generally observe external propriety 
of deportment. But that their monasteries 
and nunneries in Catholic countries are still 
nearly as corrupt as ever, and that the celi- 
bacy of the monks and priests leads to the 



49 



same licentiousness of practice ; is evident 
from undeniable authority, from the testi- 
mony of Romanists themselves ! ! Scipio de 
JRicci, a bigoted Roman bishop, but a good 
man, being employed by the Duke of Tusca- 
ny to reform the nunneries in that territory, 
visited these institutions, and presented to 
the pope the most revolting picture of these 
sinks of corruption.* The character of these 

* "The vicar of Prato, Lorenzo Pally, being inter- 
rogated (by Ricci) answered that the nuns believed 
neither the sacraments of the church, nor the eternity 
of another life ; that they denied certain criminal ac- 
tions to be sins, and especially those of the flesh." 

"The disorders discovered at Prato, were only the 
sequel of those which the government had rooted out 
of the convents of Pistoria. In two letters of Flavia 
Peraccini, Prioress of Catherine of Pistoria, to Com- 
parini, rector of the episcopal seminary in the same 
city, the nun relates what passed before her eyes in 
her own convent, what had passed there before she 
wrote, and what still continued to take place in other 
convents, particularly at Prato." 

"It would require both time and memory, (she 
says) to recollect what has occurred during the twen- 
ty-four years that I have had to do with monks, and 
all that I have heard tell of them. Of those who are 
gone to the other world, I shall say nothing ; of those 
5 



50 



establishments in South America and the 
Spanish West Indies is equally notori- 

who are still alive, and have little decency of conduct, 
there are very many." — " With the exception of three 
or four, all that I ever knew, alive or dead, are of the 
same character ,♦ they have all the same maxims and the 
same conduct, They are on more intimate terms with 
the nuns than if they were married to them" 

"It is the custom now, that, when they come to 
visit any sick sister, they sup with the nuns, they 
sing, dance, play and sleep in the convent. It is a 
maxim of theirs, that God has forbidden hatred but 
not love; and that the man is made for the woman, 
and the woman for the man. They teach us to amuse 
ourselves, saying, that Paul said the same, who 
wrought with his own hands. They deceive the in- 
nocent, and even those that are most circumspect ; and 
it would need a miracle to converse with them and not 
fall. The priests are the husbands of the nuns, and the 
lay brothers of the lay sisters. In the chamber of one 
of those I have mentioned, a man was one day found ; 
he fled ; but very soon after they gave him to us as 

confessor extraordinary !" "The monks have never 

done any thing to me personally to make me dislike 
them ; but I will say that so iniquitous a race as the 
monks nowhere exists. Bad as the seculars are, they 
do not at all come up to them ; and the art of the monks 
with the world and their superiors baffles descrip- 
tion." " When they gave us the holy water every 

year, they threw every thing, even the beds, into dis- 



51 



ous :* and God in his inscrutable providence 
has within late years granted us by the tes- 

order. What a racket they used to make ! One time 
they washed father Manni's face and dressed him like 
a nun. In short, it was a perpetual scene of amuse- 
ments, comedies and conversation forever. Every 
monk who passed by on his way to the chapter, they 
found some means of showing into the convent, and 
entreated a sick sister to confess herself. Everlasting 
scandal about husbands — of those who had stolen the 
mistress of such a one ; how others had avenged them- 
selves in the chapter ; and how they would not have 
forgiven even in death." — " Do not suppose, {she says') 
that this is the case in our convent alone. It is just the 
same at Lucia, at Prato, at Pisa, at Perugia ; and I have 
heard things that would astonish you. Every where it is 
the same, every where the same disorders, every where 
the same abuses prevail." Let the reader remember, 
that this is the testimony given by inmates of the nun- 
neries, given to the Romish bishop, and sent by him 
to the pope with the prayer for reform ! No Protes- 
tant had any hand in it. But instead of effecting re- 
form, De Ricci was persecuted and disgraced for pub- 
lishing the truth to the world ! ! ! See The Secrets of 
Nunneries Disclosed, compiled from the autograph ma- 
nuscripts of Scipio de Ricci, Roman Catholic bishop 
of Pistoria and Prato, by Mr. De Potter. Edited by Tho- 
mas Roscoe, Abridged, pp. 91 — 94. Published by D. 
Appleton & Co. No. 200 Broadway, New York, 1834. 
* According to St. Ligori, who was the author of 



52 

timony of other witnesses beside Maria 
Monk, the most appalling disclosures of mid- 

the most modern system of theology published by the 
papists, and was canonized by Pope Pius VII. in 
1816, the council of Trent made regular and standing 
provision for mulcting those priests who keep concu- 
bines! ! " A bishop, (he says) however poor he may 
be, cannot appropriate to himself pecuniary fines with- 
out the license of the apostolic see. But he ought to 
apply them to pious uses. Much less can he apply 
those fines to any thing else but pious uses, which 
the council of Trent has laid upon non-resident clergy- 
men, or upon those clergymen who keep concubines." 
Ligori, Ep. Doc. Mor. p. 444, as translated by Mr. 
Smith, late a popish priest, in his Synopsis of Moral 
Theology, taken from Ligori, published in New York, 
in 1836. 

" How shameful a thing, (says Mr. Smith) that the 
apostolic see, as they call it, that is, the Pope of Rome, 
should enrich his coffers by the fines which he re- 
ceives from the profligacy of his clergy! If they 
keep concubines, they must pay a fine for it, but if 
they marry, they must be excommunicated I This 
accounts at once for the custom in Spain, and other 
countries, and especially on the island of Cuba, and 
in South America; where almost every priest has 
concubines, who are known by the name of nieces. — 
The f Narrative of Rosamond,' who was once her- 
self one of these concubines, in the island of Cuba, 



53 



night scenes of debauchery, of deception, of 
cruelty, which are transacted in a nunnery 

portrays the general licentiousness of the Popish 
clergy in colours so shocking", that the picture cannot 
be looked at without a blush. Here we see the doc- 
trine fully exemplified by practice. This keeping of 
concubines is a thing so common in the Popish West 
India Islands, and in South America, that it is rarely 
noticed." See Smith's Synopsis of Ligori, p. 296, 
297. 

St.»Ligori himself asserts a fact which, as Mr. 
Smith justly observes, strongly corroborates the Re- 
velations of Maria Monk; namely, that refractory, 
incorrigible nuns are punished by imprisonment for 
life. " A nun (says he) who is guilty of a grievous 
or pernicious crime, and who appears to be notori- 
ously incorrigible is to be co-nfined in perpetual im- 
prisonment ." But they are not expelled as some 
monks are. The reason is obvious. Nuns, if ex- 
pelled, would reveal the licentious and brutal treat- 
ment they had received from the priests, whilst the 
latter would be careful not to inform on themselves. 
Smith's Synopsis of Ligori's Moral Theology, p. 231? 
232, Now let it be remembered, that the writings of 
Ligori were approved by Pope Pius YII. and by the 
Sacred Congregation of Rites so late as 1816 : and 
that, as Dr. Varela, the priest of New York asserted 
three years ago, are in the hands of almost every 
priest, and therefore also of those at Montreal; and 
5* 



54 



on the borders of our own country, as if to 
warn the citizens of this republic in time to 

there will be nothing incredible in the following nar- 
rative of Maria Monk. St. Ligori himself testifies, 
that nuns are thus imprisoned for life. Maria Monk, 
p. 138—142, 2d edit, says, 

" I continued to visit the cellar frequently, to carry 
up coal for the fires, without any thing more than a 
general impression that there were two nuns some- 
where imprisoned in it. One day while there on my 
usual errand, I saw a nun standing on the right of the 
cellar, in front of one of the cell doors I had before ob- 
served ; she was apparently engaged with something 
within. This attracted my attention. The door ap- 
peared to close in a small recess, and was fastened 
with a stout iron bolt on the outside, the end of which 
was secured by being let into a hole in the stone-work 
which formed the posts. The door which was of 
wood, was sunk a few inches beyond the stone-work, 
which rose and formed an arch over head. Above the 
bolt was a small window supplied with a fine grating, 
which swung open, a small bolt having been removed 
from it, on the outside. The nun I had observed 
seemed to be whispering with some person within, 
through the little window : but I hastened to get my 
coal, and left the cellar, presuming that was the prison. 
When 1 visited the place again, being alone, I ven- 
tured to the spot, determined to learn the truth, pre- 
suming that the imprisoned nuns of whom the Supe- 



55 



guard against the inroads of the destroyer. 
Indeed, incredible as it might seem, from the 

rior had told me on my admission, were confined 
there. I spoke at the window where I had seen the 
nun standing, and heard a voice reply in a whisper. 
The aperture was so small, and the place so dark, 
that I could see nobody ; hnt I learnt that a poor 
wretch was confined there a prisoner. I feared that 
I might be discovered, and after a few words, which 
I thought could do no harm, I withdrew. 

46 My curiosity was now alive, to learn every thing 
I could about so mysterious a subject. I made a few 
inquiries of Saint Xavier, who only informed me that 
they were punished for refusing to obey the Superior, 
Bishop, and Priests. I afterwards found that the other 
nuns were acquainted with the fact I had just disco- 
vered. All I could learn, however, was, that the pri- 
soner in the cell whom I had spoken with, and another 
in the cell just beyond, had been confined there several 
years without having been taken out; but their names, 
connections, offences, and every thing else relating to 
them, I could never learn, and am still as ignorant as 
ever. Some conjectured that they had refused to 
comply with some of the rules of the convent, or 
requisitions of the Superior: others, that they were 
heiresses whose property was desired for the convent, 
and who would not consent to sign deeds of it. Some 
of the nuns informed me, that the severest of their 
sufferings arose from fear of supernatural beings, 



56 

questions which females are required to 
answer according to their own published 

" I often spoke with one of them in passing near 
their cells, when on errands in the cellar, hut never 
ventured to stop long, or to press my inquiries very- 
far. Besides, I found her reserved, and little disposed 
to converse freely, a thing I could not wonder at 
when I considered her situation, and the characters 
of persons around her. She spoke like a woman in 
feeble health, and of broken spirits* I occasionally 
saw other nuns speaking to them, particularly at 
mealtimes, when they were regularly furnished with 
food, which was such as we ourselves ate. 

"Their cells were occasionally cleaned, and then 
the doors were opened. I never looked into them, 
but was informed that the ground was their only 
floor. I presumed that they were furnished with 
straw to lie upon, as I always saw a quantity of old 
straw scattered about that part of the cellar, after the 
cells had been cleansed. I once inquired of one of 
them, whether they could converse together, and she 
replied that they could, through a small opening be- 
tween their cells, which 1 could not see. 

"I once inquired of the one I spoke with in passing. 
Whether she wanted any thing, and she replied, • Tell 
Jane Ray I want to see her a moment if she can slip 
away.' When I went up I took an opportunity to 
deliver my message to Jane, who concerted with me 
a signal to be used in future, in case a similar request 



57 



directory, it is evident that even in these 
United States, the intercourse of the priests 

should be made through me. This was a sly wink 
at her with one eye, accompanied with a slight toss 
of my head. She then sought an opportunity to visit 
the cellar, and was soon able to hold an interview 
with the poor prisoners, without being noticed by 
any one but myself. I afterward learnt that mad 
Jane Ray was not so mad, but she could feel for 
those miserable beings, and carry through measures 
for their comfort. She would often visit them with 
sympathizing words, and, when necessary, conceal 
part of her food while at table, and secretly convey 
it into their dungeons. Sometimes we would com- 
bine for such an object ; and I have repeatedly aided 
her in thus obtaining a larger supply of food than 
they had been able to obtain from others. 

44 1 frequently thought of the two nuns confined in 
the cells, and occasionally heard something said about 
them, but very little. Whenever I visited the cellar, 
and thought it safe, I went up to the first of them, 
and spoke a word or two, and usually got some brief 
reply, without ascertaining that any particular change 
took place with either of them. The one with whom 
alone I ever conversed, spoke English perfectly well, 
and French I thought as well. I supposed she must 
have been well educated, for I could not tell which 
was her native language. I remember that she fre- 
quently used these words when I wished to say more 



58 

and females at the confessional is such as no 
virtuous father or husband ought to permit, 
such as no wife or daughter ought to hear 
without feeling insulted.* They are too ob- 

to her, and which alone showed that she was con* 
stantly afraid of punishment: 'Oh, there's somebody 
coming — do go away !' I have been told that the 
other prisoner also spoke English. 

"It was impossible for me to form any certain 
opinion about the size or appearance of those two 
miserable creatures, for their cells were perfectly 
dark, and I never caught the slightest glimpse even 
of their faces. It is probable they were women not 
above the middle size, and my reason for this pre- 
sumption is the following: I was sometimes appointed 
to lay out the clean clothes for all the nuns in the 
Convent on Saturday evening, and was always di- 
rected to lay by two suits for the prisoners. Parti- 
cular orders were given to select the largest sized 
garments for several tall nuns; but nothing of the 
kind was ever said in relation to the clothes of those 
in the cells." 

* The ensuing " examination of conscience," as it 
is termed, is extracted from the Catholic's Manual, 
a volume issued by John Power, the popish vicar 
general of New York, pp. 289, 290, 291. Persons 
going to confession, are required to state whether 
they have committed the following sins, viz. — " Sins 



59 

scene to be publicly repeated before a pro- 
miscuous assembly. What an invaluable ser- 

against ourselves by impurity. 1. In thoughts: in 
wilfully dwelling upon or taking pleasure in unchaste 
thoughts. It must be mentioned how long, whether 
with desires of committing evil ; whether they caused 
irregular motions, and in a holy place — and whether 
the objects of sinful desires were single or married 
persons, or persons consecrated to God, (that is, the 
priest himself !) 2. In words. Speaking obscenely, 
listening with pleasure to such vile language, singing 
unchaste songs, giving toasts and sentiments contrary 
to modesty. 3. In looks. Viewing immodest objects ; 
reading bad books ; keeping indecent pictures ; fre- 
quenting plays, and tempting others to sin by disso- 
lute glances, gestures, and immodesty in dress or 
behaviour. 4. In actions. Defiling the sanctity of 
marriage by shameful liberties contrary to nature; in 
touching ourselves or others immodestly, or permit- 
ting such base liberties. Certain sins of a lonely 
and abominable nature. What were the consequences 
of these sinful impurities 1 explain every thing — the 
number of these bad actions, the length of time con- 
tinued in the habit, and with whom we sinned." — 
Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 726, Hartford ed. of 1833. 

Of similar obscene character, though not quite so 
much in detail, are the questions published in Phila- 
delphia, under the sanction of Mr. Kenrick, the Ro- 
man prelate of that city, in the Key of Paradise, p, 



60 

vice have not the blessed reformers rendered 
to the cause of religion, of moral purity, of 

115. Those in the "Pious Guide to Prayer," &c, 
used in Maryland, and published at Georgetown, 
1825, fourth edition, p. 145 to 148, embrace all the 
above questions, with additional intervening reflec- 
tions. 

Equally if not more indecent are the questions 
contained in a German work, republished in Baltimore, 
in 1830, and used at least by some German Catholics, 
to the writer's certain knowledge, in this country. It 
has the sanction of several Romish dignitaries in 
Europe, and on the title-page the impress " mit 
Erlaubnisz der Obern," (sanctioned by the higher 
authorities.) This work, entitled, "Elsasisches Mis- 
sionsbiichlein," by a priest of the society of Jesuits, 
&c. &c, contains a mirror for the confessional 
(Beichtspiegel,) and among many other questions 
similar to those of the New York directory, has the 
following : 

" If you are married, you must state, in open-hearted 
confession, every thing (touching this commandment, 
adultery, &e.) which you committed in single life; 
then also what sins you committed after your mar- 
riage, either with others or with your companion, 
inasmuch as not all things are allowed even to mar- 
ried persons. Do not forget to mention what may 
have taken place between the time of your engage- 
ment and your actual marriage; inasmuch as any 



61 



conjugal security, of social happiness, by 
banishing these corrupting doctrines and 

thing impure committed at that time is yet a mortal 
sin." 

" I have indulged in a criminal attachment. — Add 
how long." 

" I have been with persons of the other sex during 
the night — How often," &e. 

" I gave occasion to unchaste dreams — How 
often," &c. 

"I have committed sins of impurity on my own 
person — How often," &c. 

"I gave unchaste kisses, or willingly received 
them — How often," &c. 

" I touched others unchastely, or permitted them to 
take such liberties with me — How often," &c. 

" I have sinned with persons of the other sex, by 
unchaste acts — How often," &c. 

u I have sinned against beasts, by licentious glances, 
or in other way — How often, &c. 

Such are the awfully obscene questions which are 
circulated by Romish priests among the people of 
every rank and age ; and about which, according to 
their own system, they must habitually converse with 
females, of every age, above twelve years ! ! Can 
any man doubt the debasing and demoralizing ten- 
dency of making such questions familiar to the minds 
of all sexes and ages, and of requiring females, on 
pain of perdition, statedly to talk with their priests 
6 



62 



institutions, by removing the obscene and 
filthy practice of auricular confession to the 
priest,* and by restoring to us and our fami- 

about them ? The writer has had serious doubts of 
the propriety of presenting these questions to his Pro- 
testant readers even in a note ; and nothing could in- 
duce him to do it, but the extreme reluctance of the 
Protestant community to believe any mere abstract 
statements of the licentious character and tendency 
of the Romish religion. Surely, when the proofs 
are taken from their own manuals of worship, pub- 
lished by themselves, in our own country, by their own 
bishops, and used in our own neighbourhood, in their 
worship, it cannot any longer be said, that these 
charges are slanderous, or are applicable only to for- 
mer ages or other countries. 

But even these questions are not all. Will it be 
believed, that five times as many more, on this same 
filthy subject, many of them far more particular and 
obscene than these, are given as instruction to priests, 
in the Theology of Peter Dens, one of the latest sys- 
tems of Papal theology, republished at Dublin, in 
1832, with the sanction of the present Archbishop 
Murray 1 It is now the text-book at the Theol. Se- 
minary at Maynooth, and has probably been studied 
by all the Irish priests, who have come amongst us. 
If any man should dispute the fact, we can show him 
the work ! 

* We subjoin the following melancholy and humi- 



63 

lies the pure and elevating doctrines of the 
gospel and the simple and holy practices of 
the primitive churches ! The Reformation 
has restored to us God's own word, which 

Hating statements from an authentic and highly inte- 
resting work, written by a converted French priest, 
now in this country, translated by Mr. S. F. B. 
Morse, Professor in the New York University, en- 
titled, Confessions of a French Catholic Priest, p. 
103, &c. 

" Three great principles and tenets are the essence 
of confession. The first is, that the confessor is as 
God himself, ivhose place he holds ; the second is, that 
nothing must be hid from the confessor, because God 
knows all, and his vicegerent must also know all ; the 
third is, that a blind and most absolute obedience is 
owed to the confessor as to God himself. Hence it is 
easy to see that Popery, by an abominable substitu- 
tion, makes man disappear as much as possible, and 
puts God himself in the place of man. This idea, 
once deeply impressed in the minds of boys, from their 
childhood, strengthened all the tenets of the Catholic 
church in the confessional, in the catechism, in dis- 
courses, in books of piety, &c, it is not astonishing 
that such respect, veneration and obedience are paid 
to the confessor. The Protestant who reads the his- 
tory of my country, will cease to gaze with surprise 
at those facts (incredible, perhaps to him) of a con- 
fessor who orders his penitent to kill another man by 



64 

teaches us the sanctity of the marriage re- 
lation, teaches females as well as males to 
confess their sins not to the priest but to Him, 
who alone can pardon them, to God ; which 

the command of the Lord. When a confessor or- 
dered the fanatic and deluded Clement to kill his king, 
Henry III., the order was from God. When Damiens 
stabbed Louis XV., the order was from God. When 
the confessor of Louis XIV. ordered him to revoke 
the edict of Nantes, the order was from God. 

" But it would be quite useless to give any more 
particular examples, since, according to the true spi- 
rit of confession, there is not a single crime which, 
looked at in the light of theology, cannot, must not, 
be advised and ordered by the confessor ; above all, 
for the advantage of the Catholic church. When a 
man acts for this end, he cannot sin; for, as it is said 
among priests, ' the end sanctifies the means.' This 
is the key-stone to the Romish edifice; and the 
priest, feeling his human weakness, has called the 
name of God to his help, to strengthen his feebleness, 
to authorise his errors, to sanctify his crimes. — I have 
confessed priests and laymen of every description, a 
bishop (once,) superiors, curates, persons high and 
low, women, girls, boys. I am, therefore, fitted to 
speak of the confessional. 

"The confession of men is a matter of high im- 
portance in political matters, to impress their minds 
with slavish ideas. As for other matters, confessors 



65 

inculcates a standard of moral purity, and 
of female delicacy, sRch as would make a 
Protestant lady shrink with detestation from 
such questions, as according to their own 
directory, even every .American Catholic 

endeavour to give a high opinion of their own holi- 
ness to fathers and husbands, that they may be in- 
duced to send to the confessional, without any fear, 
their wives and daughters. Because, doubtless, should 
fathers and husbands know what passes at the con- 
fession-box between the holy man and their wives 
and daughters, they never would permit them again 
to go to those schools of vice. But priests command 
most carefully to women never to speak of their con- 
fession to men, and they inquire severely about that 
in every confession. 

"The confession of the female sex is the great 
triumph, the most splendid theatre of priests. Here 
is completed the work which is but begun through 
all their intercourse with women ; for all our rela- 
tions with them begin from their birth and continue 
till their death. In their baptism we sprinkle their 
heads with holy water, at their death, their grave; 
and the space comprised between these two epochs 
is filled by a thousand ecclesiastical duties. The 
more I think of this matter, the more I remember 
this sentence — 'Priests, in taking the vows of re- 
nouncing marriage, engage themselves to take the 
wives of others.' 

6* 



66 



female must converse about to her priest at 
confession. 



III. The Reformation has given us liberty 
of conscience, and freedom from relU 
gious persecution. 

Prior to the Reformation the corruption 
and tyranny and usurpations of the Romish 

"As soon as the young girl, for I speak peculiarly 
of their confession, enters the confessional, ' Bless 
me, father,' she says, kneeling and crossing herself, 
6 for I have sinned ;' and the priest mumbles, ' Domi* 
nus sit in ore tuo et in corde tuo, ut confitearis omnia 
peccata tua,'— ' The Lord be in your heart and lips* 
that you may confess all your sins.' If she is an 
ugly, common country girl or woman, she is soon 
despatched ; but, on the contrary, if she is pretty and 
fair, the holy father puts himself at ease, he examines 
her in the most secret recesses of her soul, he unfolds 
her mind in every sense, in every manner, upon every 
matter. This is the way which Theology recom- 
mends us to follow in our interrogations : ' Daughter 
have you had bad thoughts ? On what subject ? how 
often]' &c. 4 Have you had bad desires ; what de* 
sires ? Have you committed bad actions ; with whom ; 
what actions'?' &c. I am obliged to stop. Many 



67 

church had risen to such a height, that the 
people were not only denied access to the 
word of their God ; but they were even 
taught not to think for themselves at all in 
matters of religion, to surrender their judg- 

times the poor ashamed girl does not dare answer the 
questions, they are so indecent. In that case the holy 
man, ceasing- his interrogations, says to her, 'Listen, 
daughter, to the true doctrine pf the church; you 
must confess the truth, all the truth, to your spiritual 
father. Do }'ou not know that I am in the place of 
God, that you cannot deceive him! Speak then; re- 
veal your heart to me as God knows it; you will be 
very glad when you will have discharged this burden 
from your mind. Will you not?' — 'Yes.' — 'Begin, 
I will help you ;' and then begins such a diabolical 
explanation as is not to be found but in houses of 
infamy, I suppose, or in our theological books. This 
is so well known, that I have often heard of wicked 
young men saying to each other, ; Come, let us go to 
confession, and the curate will teach us a great many 
corrupt things which we never knew ;' and many 
young girls have told me in confession, that in order 
to become acquainted with details on those matters 
pleasing to their corrupt nature, they went purposely 
to the confessional to speak about it with their spi- 
ritual father. Sometimes I have heard the confession 
of young girls not above sixteen years of age, who 
explained to me such disgusting things with a preci- 



68 

ment implicitly to the priests, and believe as 
holy mother church believes. The principle 
on which every true Romanist is required 
to act, is thus expressed by pope Pius in his 
Creed : " I also profess and undoubtedly re- 

sion, a propriety (or rather impropriety) of terms, 
that when I asked them where they had gathered all 
this strange learning, they seemed as much astonished 
at my question as I was at their confession ; and said 
to me : 4 Why, father, our former confessor taught us 
all this, and commanded us never to omit these de- 
tails, otherwise we should be damned.' I replied to 
them : ' I pray you never use such terms again, they 
are unworthy of a Christian mouth, you have misun- 
derstood your confessor.' I learned afterwards that 
these misguided persons left my confessional, be- 
cause they said I was an ignorant confessor, who 
did not confess like others, and who did not cause them 
to say all" 

" After so many instructions, the young girl is 
well indoctrinated, w T ell fitted to answer either the 
questions or the purposes of the priest. This poison 
diffused in her heart soon infects her whole mind and 
destroys her purity. It is precisely at such a point 
of time that her cruel foe waits for her. When he 
sees that she is made vicious and corrupt by the 
teachings of the confessional, he is sure of his 
success." 

[The modes by which the priest persuades his vie- 



69 

ceive all other things delivered, defined and 
declared by the sacred canons, and general 
councils, and particularly by the holy coun- 
cil of Trent ; and likewise I also condemn, 
reject and anathematize all things contrary 
thereto and all heresies whatsoever, con- 
demned, rejected and anathematized by the 
church."* The laity are therefore not per- 
mitted to imitate the noble Bereans, who 
searched the Scriptures daily ; they are even 
prohibited to a certain extent by their own 



tim that she is without sin in doing whatever he 
commands, since he is responsible, and since he can 
absolve her from it, and other means of deceiving at 
the confessional, are then too graphically related to 
be publicly told ; and I have thought it best, says the 
translator, Professor Morse, with the consent of the 
author, to suppress all but the closing facts.] 

44 The truth is, that some cunning priests have a 
seraglio like that of the Sultan, and it is by no means 
an easy task for him to conceal his favourites from 
each other, because he says to each that she is his 
only mistress. It would be easy for me to enlarge 
on this point, and to give other details, but these 1 
hope will suffice; perhaps they are already too 
many."— P. 106. 112. 

* Cramp's Textbook, p. 389. 



70 



priests from obeying the precept of the Sa- 
viour ; Search the Scriptures, for in them ye 
think ye have eternal life, and they are they 
which testify of me. Nay even in our midst, 
Romanists are not permitted to read the 
miscellaneous literature of their age and na- 
tion. The freedom of the press is suppressed 
in every country on earth, where popery has 
power to control it. Nor could any other 
event be expected in our own country, if 
Romanists should gain the ascendency ; for 
this is one of the acknowledged, unaltered, 
and unalterable principles of their church. 
Here let our newspaper editors learn what 
awaits them, if they do not in time impar- 
tially examine the true poll //co-religious cha- 
racter of Romanism, and duly instruct the 
popular mind on this subject. Its very es- 
sence is an admixture of civil and religious 
despotism, and the certain ultimate result of 
its preponderance must be a union of church 
arid state on anti-republican principles. 
Listen to the testimony of the papists them- 
selves. "The pope and emperor ought to 
be implicitly obeyed; the heretic's books 
burned, and the printers and sellers of them 



71 



duly punished. There is no other way to 
suppress and extinguish the pernicious sect 
of Protestants." Thus said the legate of Pope 
Adrian VI. to the diet of Nuremberg. A 
decree of the Lateran council held in 1515, 
determines in substance, " that no book shall 
be printed without the bishop's license ; that 
those who transgressed this decree shall for- 
feit the whole impression, which shall be 
publicly burned ; pay a fine of one hundred 
ducats ; be suspended from his business for 
one year, and be excommunicated ; that is, 
given over to the devil, soul and body in 
God's name and the saints !" The celebrated 
council of Trent whose decrees are acknow- 
ledged by all Catholics, decided that "being 
desirous of setting bounds to the printers, who 
with unlimited boldness, supposing them- 
selves at liberty to do as they please, print 
editions of the Holy Bible with notes and 
expositions, taken indifferently from any 
writer, without the permission of their eccle- 
siastical superiors, &c. Neither shall any 
one hereafter sell such books, or even retain 
them in his possession, unless they have been 
firSt examined and approved by the ordinary, 



72 

under penalty of anathema, and the pecu- 
niary fine adjudged by the last council of 
Lateran" (that above mentioned.*) And with 
a candour truly commendable, which puts to 
shame those Protestants who insist on be- 
lieving modern popery to be different from 
that of former ages, Pope Gregory XVI. in 
1S32, explicitly says in his Circular letter, 
"Hue spectat, &c. To this point tends that 
most vile, detestable, and never to be suffi- 
ciently execrated liberty of booksellers, 
namely of publishing writings of whatever 
kind they please, a liberty which some persons 
dare, with such violence of language to de- 
mand and promote. — Clement XIII. our 
predecessor of happy memory, in his circu- 
lar on the suppression of noxious books (i. e. 
Protestant books) pronounces: "We must 
contend with energy such as the subject re- 
quires ; and with all our might exterminate 
the deadly mischief of so many books; for 
the matter of error will never be effectually 
removed, unless the guilty elements of 
depravity be consumed in the fire" "The 

* Cramp's Textbook of Popery, p. 56. 



73 

apostolic see has through ail ages ever striven 
to condemn suspected and noxious (i. e. Pro- 
testant) books, and to wrest them forcibly 
out of men's hands ; it is most clear how 
rash, false, and injurious to our apostolic see, 
and fruitful of enormous evils to the Chris- 
tian (papal) public is the doctrine of those, 
who not only reject the censorship of books, 
as too severe and burdensome, but even pro- 
ceed to such a length of wickedness as to 
assert, that it is contrary to the principles of 
equal justice, and dare to deny to the church 
the right of enacting and employing it,"* 
pp. 13, 14, 15. Accordingly a rigid censor- 
ship of the press is established and an Index 
Expurgatorius is published from time to 
time at Rome, and throughout papal coun- 
tries, containing a list of books printed in 

* See the very valuable work of Dr. Brownlee, 
** Popery an Enemy to Civil and Religious Liberty," 
p. 119, 120. This work ought to be read by every 
American statesman, and every true friend of Ameri- 
can liberty. Its author may justly be regarded as one 
of the ablest, most learned, and indefatigable cham- 
pions of Protestantism, which the present age has 
produced. 

7 



74 

Protestant lands, which no Catholic may read 
on pain of excommunication.* In this cata- 
logue are included not only the prominent 
Protestant Reformers : but even such mis- 
cellaneous writers as Locke, Young, Lava- 
ter, Bacon and Addison ! A strange me- 
thod this of obeying the inspired precept to 
prove all things and hold fast that which is 
good !t A strange system of liberty of 
thought and freedom of discussion to be en- 
grafted on our republican institutions ! 

Nor are these restrictions mere idle sta- 
tutes. They are written in the blood of 
millions of our brethren, who sought to serve 
God according to the dictates of their con- 
science, and when interdicted had the moral 
heroism to obey God rather than man. The 
infernal inquisition, as it is aptly, and by 
common consent styled, was expressly insti- 
tuted to execute with fearful rigour the ten- 
der mercies of mother church on all who 
dare to think or speak for themselves. How 
faithfully this trust has been executed is at- 

* Cramp's Textbook, p. 378. 
\ iThess. 5: 21. 



75 

tested, alas ! but too fully by the ensanguined 
annals of the Christian world ! What tyro 
in history has not found his heart sickening 
at the melancholy scenes of torture too 
horrible for human nature to endure ! The 
Catholic church openly confesses to believe 
it her duty to compel all others to adopt her 
faith. Pope Pius in his bull of confirma- 
tion, orders " all the faithful to receive and 
inviolably to observe the decrees of the 
council of Trent ; enjoining archbishops, 
bishops, &c. to procure that observance 
from those under them, and in order there- 
to, if necessary, to call in the aid of the 

SECULAR ARM, &C.* 

Cardinal Bellarmine, one of the acknow- 
ledged standard authors of the Romish 
church, says, "Experience teaches that 
there is no other remedy for the evil, but to 
put heretics (Protestants) to death ; for the 
(Romish) church proceeded gradually and 
tried every remedy : at first she merely ex- 
communicated them ; afterwards she added 
a fine ; then she banished them ; and finally 

* Cramp, p. 385. 



76 

she was constrained to put them to death."* 
The general council of the Lateran, whose 
canon is at this day in force, decreed : " Let 
the secular powers be compelled^ necessary, 
to exterminate to their utmost power all he- 
retics (Protestants) denoted by the church."t 
The present textbook of instruction in the 
Maynooth popish College in Ireland, already 
referred to, which has doubtless been studied 
by many priests now in the United States, 
expressly inculcates : That baptized unbe- 
lievers, such as heretics (Protestants) and 
apostates usually are, and also baptized 
schismatics, may be compelled to return to 
the Catholic (Popish) faith, and to the unity 
of the church, by inflicting bodily punish- 
ments.% "The church judges and punishes 
heretics (Protestant) because although they 
are out of the church, they being baptized, 
are subject to the (Romish) church . ? "§ Nor 
is this inhuman doctrine, so dangerous to 
the liberties of every Protestant, inculcated 

* Bellarm. de Laicis, Lib. iii. c. 51. See Smith's 
Synopsis of St. Ligori, p. 406. ,f Ibid ' 

% Petri Dens Theologia, &c. vol. ii. p. 80 of the 
edition of 1832. § Do. p. 114. 



77 

merely on the priests, or kept as a secret 
among them. In order to carry on perse- 
cution, the mass of the people must be, at 
least in some degree, prepared for it. There- 
fore, the only copies of the scripture which 
are permitted to be read by the people, the 
Douay Bible and the Rhemish Testament, 
have so falsified the sacred volume, as to 
make it teach the same doctrine and breathe 
the same spirit of hatred and blood, against 
Protestants. Thus the latter has the fol- 
lowing comments : 

Matth. 3. "Heretics may be punished 
and suppressed, and may, and ought by 
public authority, either spiritual or tempo- 
ral, to be chastised or executed" 

Gal. 1:8. " Catholics should not spare 
their own parents, if they are heretics." 

Heb. 5: 7. "The translators of the Pro- 
testant Bible ought to be abhorred to the 
depths of hell." 

Rev. 17:6. Drunken with the blood of 
saints. " Protestants (says the comment) 
foolishly expound this of Rome, for that 
there they put heretics to death, and allow 
of their punishment in other countries ; but 
7* 



78 

their blood is not called the blood of saints, 
no more than the blood of thieves, man- 
killers, and other malefactors, for the shed- 
ding of which, by order of justice, no com- 
monwealth shall answer."* 

No wonder, that in Roman Catholic coun- 
tries, where the priests had full opportunity 
to inculcate this exterminating spirit on the 
people, the latter were willing to execute 
the horrid persecutions against Protestants, 
which stain the annals of Europe. Yet we 
do not believe that the mass of American 
Catholics have imbibed the inhuman, perse- 
cuting spirit breathed by their Bible. We 
believe they are more humane and charita- 
ble than the priests wish them to be, and 
than they would permit them to be, if Ro- 
manism had the ascendency among us.t 

* Protest. -vol. ii. 752. it. 114. 

f It is indeed true that numerous threats of personal 
violence and murder, have been uttered against pro- 
minent individuals in our land, who felt it a duty to 
apprize the community of the real principles of Ro- 
manism, such as the Rev. Dr. Brownlee, Rev. B. 
Kurtz, Rev. R. Breckinridge and others. But beyond 
threats nothing has been attempted ; and Romish 



79 

In full accordance with the above settled 
and avowed persecuting principles of pope- 
ry, the infernal inquisition has been put and 
kept in operation, whenever the pope and 
priests could accomplish their ends. I know, 
the Jesuit, bishop England, in his Sermon 
before Congress, repeated the usual evasion, 
that the inquisition is a civil and not an ec- 
clesiastical tribunal. But this is all a piece 
of subterfuge. It is true that the horrors of 
the inquisition can be carried into full exe- 
cution only where the civil government has 
become connected with the Romish church, 
and in such countries where the government 
sanctions the inquisition, it is, we believe, 
customary, that a civil officer is appointed 
to execute the sentence of the inquisition on 
the hapless victim of their power. But the 
whole trial is conducted, and sentence 
passed, by ecclesiastical officers. None but 
priests can be inquisitors, and the tortures 
in the inquisition itself are, in every sense. 

priests well know, that the eyes of the community 
are fixed on the individuals, whose fidelity to their 
country has exposed them to papal odium, and that 
millions stand prepared for their defence. 



80 

under their entire control, and applied, ex- 
clusively by their command and in their 
presence, and by their minions. As well 
might it be said that our country courts are 
not civil but religious tribunals, because the 
hangman who executes the sentence pro- 
nounced by them, is a Lutheran or Calvinist, 
a Methodist, or perchance a Romanist ! No 
case, if we mistake not, has ever occurred 
in the history of the inquisition, in the mil- 
lions of victims sacrificed by this bloody 
tribunal, in which the civil officer has dared 
to refuse to execute the sentence of the in- 
quisitors ; for he well knew that his own 
bones would pay the price of his temerity ! 
The inquisition therefore undoubtedly re- 
mains what it always has been, an ecclesi- 
astical tribunal, the engine of an intolerant, 
persecuting church to inflict tortures the 
most inhuman and savage, on all who dare 
to exercise their natural and unalienable 
right, of judging for themselves in matters 
of religion, and obeying God rather than 
man ! The inquisition gradually grew out 
of the duty enjoined on the bishops by Pope 
Lucius III. A. D. 1184, to visit each his 



81 

diocess, at least once or twice a year, for 
the purpose of searching for heretics. Pope 
Innocent III. by his bull of 1207, sent his 
inquisitors against the Waldenses,* and the 
fourth Lateran council in 1215, in order that 
this bloody work might be prosecuted with- 
out any interruption, converted this inquisi- 
torial power of the bishops into a standing 
iriquisition.which establishment was further 
matured at the council of Toulouse, 1229. 
In the year 1232-3, pope Gregory IX. ap- 
pointed the Dominicans perpetual inquisitors 
in the name of the pope A In 1261, pope 
Urban IV. issued a brief, ordering that in 
all cases where bishops had commenced pro- 
cess against any persons accused before the 
inquisition, the decision of the inquisitors 
should have precedence, and the execution 
of the punishments denounced by them not 
be hindered. In 1325 pope John XXII. for- 
bade the formation of treaties with heretics, 
pronounced those already made not binding, 
and directed the inquisitors to arrest all per- 

* Eisenschmidt'8 Romisches Bullarium, vol. i. p. 31. 
f See Grieseler's Hist. vol. ii. p. 388. Note 18. 
" Adjieimus insuper," &e. 



82 



sons charged with favouring or harbouring 
heretical persons.* Pope Paul III. in 1542, 
issued a bull for the express purpose of for- 
tifying and giving increased efficacy to this 
infernal tribunal. He, amongst other things, 
decreed, that no persons, of any rank or pur- 
suit, shall be exempt from this tribunal, on 
pretence of having received any such license 
or privilege of exemption from the papal 
chair. He says expressly " that the powers 
of the inquisitors shall now and hereafter 
extend to all persons suspected of heresy, 
&c. — That no civil authorities shall dare to 
prevent the inquisitors from executing their 
functions, &c.t In another bull issued A. D. 
1542, this pontiff established a General 
Congregation of the /n^mYeon, with power 
to arrest and even imprison (carceribus 
mancipandi) suspected persons of any and 
of every rank, to prosecute their trial to a 
final decision, when the canonical punish- 
ments shall be inflicted, and the property of 
those condemned to death, be disposed of. J 

* Eisenschmidt'sBullarium Romanum vol. i. p. 164. 

f Id. vol. ii. p. 1, 2, 3, and B. Magnum, T. i. p. 

751. const. 80. ed. Lux. % Idem. vol. ii. p. 4. 



83 

And finally, he, in advance, pronounces all 
their decisions valid, demands inviolable 
obedience to them, and pronounces every 
attempt of the civil authorities to interfere 
with the powers of the inquisitors null and 
void."* 

And the Council of Trent, the last general 
council of the Romish church, four mem- 
bers of which had themselves been inqui- 
sitors,! expressed great interest in behalf of 
the inquisition. i In view of all these facts, 
the ecclesiastical character of the inquisition 
ought never again to be denied. The popes 
and Romish church have continued§ to this 
day to favour and preserve this tribunal 
wherever they could, and even in these 
United States, bishop England attempted, in 
a lecture at Baltimore, to vindicate and eu- 
logize this satanic institution. || According 
to Llorente, this fearful tribunal cost Spain 
alone 2,000,000 of lives, and the amount of 

* Id. p. 5. and Bull. m. Tom. i. p. 762. 

f Mendham's council of Trent, p. 190. 

X Mendham's council of Trent, pp. 189, 190. 

§ Dr. Brownlee, Popery an Enemy, &c, p. 105, &c. 

jj See Smith's Synopsis of St. Ligori, p. 313, 315. 



84 

torments suffered by these, and the other 
victims of papal persecution, was probably 
greater than that of all the generations that 
ever lived and died in God's appointed way, 
by natural death. A glance at the nature 
of these tortures will illustrate our idea. 
One mode of torture is by the pendulum. 
"The condemned," says Llorente, "is fast- 
ened in a groove upon a table upon his 
back ; suspended above him is a pendulum, 
the lower edge of which is sharp, and it is 
so constructed as to become longer at every 
stroke. The wretch sees this implement of 
destruction swinging to and fro above him, 
and every moment the keen edge approach- 
ing nearer and nearer : at length it cuts the 
skin of his nose, and gradually cuts deeper 
and deeper, till life is extinct." This punish- 
ment is yet in use in this secret tribunal ; for 
one of the prisoners released when the 
Cortes of Madrid threw open the inquisition 
in 1820, had actually been condemned to it, 
and was to have been executed on the ensu- 
ing day ! Another mode of torture consists 
in hoisting the victim to the ceiling by seve- 
ral thin cords tied to his wrists upon his 



85 

back, whilst a weight of lOOlbs. is attached 
to his feet. He is then suddenly suffered to 
drop, yet not so low as to let the weight 
touch the floor. His fall is so sudden and 
the shock so great as to dislocate his shoul- 
ders and often to break his bones ! ! A third 
torture "consisted of an instrument some- 
thing like a smith's anvil, fixed in the middle 
of the floor, with a spike on the top. Ropes 
are attached to each corner of the room, to 
which the criminal's legs and arms are tied, 
and he is drawn up a little and then let down 
with his back bone exactly on the spike of 
iron, upon which his whole weight rests. A 
fourth torture, being what is termed a slight 
one, they apply only to women. Matches 
of tow and pitch are wrapped round their 
hands, and then set on fire and suffered to 
burn until the flesh is consumed.* A fifth 
is the torture by fire. "The prisoner is 
placed with his naked legs in the stocks. 
The soles of his feet are then well greased 
with lard (or other penetrating andinflamma- 



* History of the Inquisition, with an Introduction 
by the Rev. Cyrus Mason, New York, 1835. 

8 



86 

ble substances)* and a blazing chafing-dish 
applied to them, by the heat of which they 
become perfectly fried. When his shrieks 
and lamentations were greatest, a board was 
placed between his feet and the fire for a 
while ; and then taken away again, if his 
tormentors were not satisfied. Another mode 
of torture was the dry pan ; in which the 
victim was literally roasted to death by a 
slow fire." Another method is thus de- 
scribed by Gavin, who had been a priest at 
Saragossa in Spain, as certified by Earl 
Stanhope, who had known him there. Ga- 
vin escaped from that country, renounced 
popery, received orders in the Protestant 
Episcopal church in London, and published 
his Masterkey to Popery, in which we find 
the following statement : "Ina large room 
she (the guide) showed me (the witness) a 
thick wheel covered on both sides with thick 
boards, and opening a little window in the 
centre of it, desired me to look with a can- 
dle on the inside, and I saw all the circum- 



* Stockdale's History of the Inquisition, p. 191, 
of the London 4to. ed. 1810. 



87 



ference of the wheel set with sharp razors. 
This instrument is designed for those that 
speak against the pope and the holy fathers. 
They are put within the wheel, and the door 
being locked, the executioner turns the wheel 
till the person is dead."* A very frequent 
mode of torture is by water. The sufferer 
is tied down on a bench, so tightly that the 
cords cut his arms and legs to the bones. 
His nostrils are closed, and a filter inserted 
into his mouth, through which a large quan- 
tity of water is gradually poured. The 
wretched victim is compelled at every breath 
to swallow a mouthful of water, until at 
length his stomach and breast are intensely 
swelled, and he at last either expires amid 
his indescribable sufferings, or a short re- 
prieve is given, only to enable him to endure 
another torturing !t And the last torture we 
shall mention is by an infernal engine in the 
form of a female, the Virgin Mary. When 
the inquisition was thrown open in Spain by 

* Gavin's Masterkey to Popery, p. 235, Hagers- 
town ed. 

f Dr. Brownlee's Letters in the Roman Catholic 
controversy, p. 337. 



88 

Napoleon, such an instrument was found in 
the cell. The familiar was ordered to ma- 
noeuvre it. He did so. It raised its arms, 
beneath its robes was a metal breast-plate 
filled with needles, spikes and lancets ! A 
knapsack was thrown into its arms, it gradu- 
ally closed them and pierced the knapsack 
with a hundred deep cuts, all of which 
would have pierced, and often did pierce 
the living victim ! ! But it is enough. Hu- 
manity sickens at the thought, that man 
could ever be so estranged from his brother, 
as thus to become his "darkest, deadliest 
foe." 

"When (says Stockdale)* the accused 
was condemned to the torture, they con- 
ducted him to the place destined for its ap- 
plication, which was called the place of 
torment. It was a subterraneous vault, the 
descent to which was by a great number of 
winding passages, in order that the shrieks 
of the unhappy sufferers should not be 
heardA In this place there were no seats, 

* History of Inquisition, pp. 191, 192. 
j- That there are deep subterraneous vaults under 
the cathedral at Baltimore, is affirmed by Rev. R. J. 






S9 

but such as were destined for the inquisi- 
tors, who were always present at the inflic- 
tion of the torture. It was lighted only by 
two gloomy lamps, whose dim and mourn- 
ful light served but to show to the criminal 
the instruments of his torment. Here it 
was, unseen by any eye save that of God, 
that these fiends in human shape inflicted 
on their defenceless victims tortures which 
humanity shudders to contemplate, and 
which, if aught on earth can do so, present 
not an unapt emblem of the torments of 
hell ! What American, that has the heart 
of a man, of a husband, or a father, will 
not be aroused to a watchfulness and effort, 
lest even his children after him might fall 
into the hands of such unfeeling execu- 
tioners ? 

In addition to this regular, systematic pro- 
cess, the Romish church has been guilty of 
numerous, extensive, and sometimes national 
persecutionSjin which hundreds of thousands 

Breckinridge, a-nd sustained by highly probable evi- 
dence. — Lit. and Relig. Magazine, Vol. L p. 361 — 
362. Similar cells are said to exist beneath the ca- 
thedrals in Pittsburg and elsewhere. 

S* 



90 



of our Protestant brethren were butehered 
in cold blood. Need I point you to the 
bloody tragedy of St. Bartholomew's eve,* 

* " To lull the Protestants into security, the court 
now enforced the terms of the treaty (of toleration 
for the Protestants) with much apparent zeal, pro- 
posed a marriage between the young king of Navarre 
(a Protestant) and the king's sister, and thus at length 
drew Coligni, the king of Navarre, and the prince of 
Conde, (and a number of other Protestant leaders) 
to appear at court. All this was preparatory to the 
assassination of the Protestants, by order of the king 
and queen mother, on Bartholomew's eve, Aug. 22d, 
1572. The bloody scene began at midnight, at the 
signal of tolling the great bell of the palace, and con- 
tinued three days at Paris. Coligni was the first vic- 
tim. "With him 500 noblemen and about 6,000 other 
Protestants were butchered in Paris alone. Orders 
were despatched to all parts of the empire for a simi- 
lar massacre every where." " From the city of Paris 
the massacre spread throughout the whole kingdom. 
In the city of Meaux, they threw above 200 into pri- 
son, and after they had ravished and killed a great 
number of women, and plundered the houses of Pro- 
testants," they deliberately murdered, one by one, all 
whom they had imprisoned. The number of Pro- 
testants thus butchered throughout France, in the 
thirty days during which this massacre was continued, 
cannot be accurately ascertained, and is estimated at 



91 

in 1572, when at the nod of the Pope a hun- 
dred thousand of the best people of France 
were massacred in cold blood by order of 
their own priest-ridden king, Charles IX. ? 
Need I speak to you of the treacherous re- 
vocation of the edict of Nantes, by approba- 
tion and applause of the Roman pontiff, in 
violation of all law, human and divine, by 
which half a million or more of the best 
citizens of France, because they would not 
renounce their religion, were compelled to 
flee from papal persecution and death, and ? 
stripped of all their earthly goods, to seek 
shelter in foreign lands ? Need I direct your 
attention to the millions of Waldenses and 
Albigenses who were butchered in cold 
blood by the minions of the pope ! Need I 
speak to you of the thirty years' war in 
Germany, which was mainly instigated by 

from 30,000 to 100,000 ! !! When the pope's legate 
sent the news to Rome, the holy father and his cardi- 
nals repaired to the church, and publicly gave thanks 
to God for the glorious news, the cannon were dis- 
charged, and a jubilee proclaimed throughout the 
Christian world ! ! ! — Murdock's Mos. Vol.iii. p. 197. 
Con vers. Lexicon, Vol. i. p. 827 — 829, 



92 



the Jesuits, in order to deprive the Protest- 
ants of the right of free religious worship, 
secured to them by the treaty of Augsburg? 
Or of the Irish rebellion,* of the inhuman 

* The celebrated historian Hume, gives the follow- 
ing description of the suffering Protestants in Ireland, 
in the great massacre which began in 1641, in the 
reign of Charles I. 

"The rebellion which had been upwards of four- 
teen years threatened in Ireland, and which had been 
repressed only by the vigour of the earl of Stafford's 
government, broke out at this time with incredible 
fury. On this fatal day, the Irish, everywhere inter- 
mingled with the English, needed but a hint from 
their leaders and priests to begin hostilities against 
a people whom they hated on account of their reli- 
gion, and envied for their riches and prosperity. The 
houses, cattle, and goods of the unwary English were 
first seized. Those who heard of the commotions in 
their neighbourhood, instead of deserting their habi- 
tations, and assembling together for mutual protection, 
remained at home, in hopes of defending their pro- 
perty, and fell thus separately into the hands of their 
enemies. After rapacity had fully exerted itself, cru- 
elty, and that the most barbarous that ever in any 
nation was known or heard of, began its operations- 
A universal massacre commenced of the English, 
(Protestants) now defenceless, and passively resigned 
to their inhuman foes ; no age, no sex, no condition 



93 



butchery of about fifteen millions of Indians 
in South America, Mexico and Cuba, by 
the Spanish papists ? In short, it is calcu- 
lated by authentic historians, that papal 

was spared. The wife, weeping for her butchered 
husband, and embracing her helpless children, was 
pierced with them, and perished by the same stroke ; 
the old, the young, the vigorous, the infirm, under- 
went the like fate, and were confounded in one com- 
mon ruin. In vain did flight save from the first as- 
sault; destruction was everywhere let loose, and met 
the hunted victims at every tarn. In vain was recourse 
had to relations, to companions, to friends ; all con- 
nexions were dissolved, and death was dealt by that 
hand from which protection was implored and ex- 
pected. Without provocation, without opposition, 
the astonished English, (Protestants) being in pro- 
found peace, and full security, were massacred by their 
nearest neighbours, with whom they had long upheld 
a continued intercourse of kindness and good offices. 
But death was the lightest punishment inflicted by 
those enraged rebels ; all the tortures which wanton 
cruelty could devise, all the lingering pains of body, 
and anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could 
not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelty 
derived from no cause. To enter into particulars 
would shock the least delicate humanity ; such enor- 
mities, though attested by undoubted evidence, would 
appear almost incredible." 



94 

Rome has shed the blood of sixty-eight 
millions of the human race in order to es- 
tablish her unfounded claims to religious 
dominion.* 

What language then can express the gra- 
titude due from Protestants to the Refor- 
mation, which has secured them the privi- 
lege of worshipping God according to the 
dictates of their own conscience without 
danger of being roasted at the fire, or hav- 
ing their bones broken on the rack ! The 
first principle which guided the Reformers 
was, that no authority on earth could justly 
require them to act contrary to the dictates 
of their conscience, and they did not hesitate 
to tell the Emperor to his face, in the XVIth 
Article of the Confession presented to him 
at Augsburg, that if ever their civil rulers 
commanded them to do aught contrary to 
their convictions of duty, they were bound 
"to obey God rather than men." Luther 
himself, the very earliest of the Reformers, 
denounced religious persecution in the most 

* Dr. Brownlee's Popery an enemy to civil liberty, 
p. 105. 



95 

decided terms. "Do you say, the civil go- 
vernment should indeed not force men to 
believe, but only interfere, in order that the 
people be not led astray by false doctrine ? 
and how could heretics otherwise be put 
down ? I answer, to counteract heresy is 
the business of ministers, not of the civil 
rulers. Here a different course must be 
pursued, and other weapons than the sword 
must fight these battles. The word of God 
must here contend ; if this proves unavail- 
ing, neither can civil governments remedy 
the evil, though they should deluge the earth 
with blood. Heresy is an intellectual thing, 
that cannot be hewn by the sword, nor 
burned with fire, nor drowned with water. 
The word of God alone can subdue it ; as 
Paul says, 'The weapons of our warfare 
are not carnal, but mighty through God to 
the pulling down of the strong holds/ &c. 
2 Cor. 10: 4, 5."* It is indeed true, that even 
the Protestant churches did not at once 
throw off every vestige of Popish intole- 
rance, but the cases of persecution by them 

* Luther's Werke. Walch's edition, vol. 10, p. 461. 



96 



were few and comparatively mild, and soon 
passed away. No Protestant church ever 
embraced the Romish doctrine, that it is a 
duty by fire and sword to compel others to 
adopt our views. When Protestants did 
persecute, it was in opposition to their own 
principles ; but when Romanists put Pro- 
testants to death, they only do what their 
creed requires, what their books distinctly 
tell us they believe it their duty to do, when- 
ever they have the predominant power in 
their hands. 

V. The last feature of the Reformation 
to which we shall advert is, that it has de- 
livered the civil government of the coun- 
tries which embraced it, from papal ty- 
ranny, and has given a new impulse to 
civil liberty, which has been felt through- 
out the Christian world. 

Since the relative tendencies of Protes- 
tantism and Popery have been fully deve- 
loped and attentively studied, no fact in the 
philosophy of history is more fully esta- 
blished than that the former is intimately 
allied to civil liberty ; and the latter to civil 
despotism. Ecclesiastical government, like 



97 

that which pertains to the state, may be di- 
vided into government of the will or autho- 
rity, and government of law or reason. The 
several Protestant churches are confessedly 
governed by fixed principles of reason and 
scripture. They have adopted the word of 
God as their ultimate book of facts and 
principles in morals, by which they profess 
to be guided, to which they refer in all doubt- 
ful or disputed cases. This book they freely 
circulate among the community, that all 
may study the subject, become qualified to 
judge for themselves, and exercise their civil 
influence in defence of their rights. Roman- 
ism demands absolute, unconditional sub- 
mission to the decisions of mother church ; 
discourages all effort in the community to 
judge for themselves ; yea, prohibits the 
general reading of God's word ; interdicts 
altogether the writings of those who impugn 
the position of the church, and condemns 
as mortal sins every attempt to vindicate 
the unalienable rights of the people. Nay, 
it even conceals from its own laymen those 
decrees of councils and bulls of popes, 
which are most dangerous to their own 
9 



m 

liberties and those of their Protestant bre- 
thren, although it requires them all from 
Sabbath to Sabbath to repeat their belief in 
them. Thus creating a habit of instinctive 
submission to certain unknown doctrines or 
principles of their church, and preparing at 
least the less enlightened eventually to exe- 
cute purposes of cruelty and injustice, from 
which, if honestly dealt with, they would 
shrink with horror. To what flagrant vio- 
lations of the civil rights of governments 
and people, these principles of popery led in 
the course of her history, is also but too in- 
delibly impressed on the annals of Europe 
and South America and even Asia ! How 
much, how incalculably much the Protestant 
nations have gained by the Reformation, is 
demonstrated by their manifest and striking 
superiority to their Catholic neighbours in 
every thing relating to civil rights and li- 
berty, to internal improvements, to domes- 
tic purity and happiness, to literary activity 
and enterprise and to scientific investiga- 
tions. But that we may do no injustice to 
the Romish church, we shall let her own 
standard writings illustrate the facts in her 



99 

history, and as her principles professedly 
change not, the investigation will be fairly 
applicable to prospective Romanism in our 
own country. The established principles of 
Popery which have hitherto led to her en- 
croachments on civil liberty, and must also 
do so in our country so soon as she pre- 
vails, are the following : — 

1. The popes actually do claim at this 
day jurisdiction over the highest civil go- 
vernments of the world. Listen to language 
of pope Pius VII., in his bull of excommu- 
nication against Napoleon in 1809: "Let 
them once and again understand, that by the 
law of Christ their sovereignty (the French 
empire) is subject to our throne ; for 
we also exercise a sovereignty ; we add also, 
a more noble sovereignty ; unless it were 
just that the spirit should yield to the flesh ; 
and celestial things to terrestrial 5 '* Hear 
again the language of the present pope 
Gregory XVI. but three years ago. His 
priests in Portugal were in rebellion against 
the government, the government drove off 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, ch. 106, 107, Vol. ii. 



100 

the pope's nuncio, and confiscated the pro- 
perty of the rebellious priests. The pope 
denounces them "for rashly arrogating 
power over the church," and adds : " We 
do explicitly declare, that we do absolutely 
reprobate all the decrees of the government 
of Lisbon made to the detriment of the 
church and her priests, and declare them 
null and of no effect." Hear finally the 
claims of Pius VII. in 1808, to his agents 
in Poland : the laws of the church do not 
recognize any civil privileges as belonging 
to persons not Catholic; that their mar- 
riages are not valid; that they can live 
only in concubinage ; that their children 
being bastards are incapacitated to inherit; 
that the Catholics themselves are not va- 
lidly married, unless they are united accord- 
ing to the rules prescribed by the court of 
Rome ; and that when they are married 
according to these rules, their marriage is 
valid even if they, in other respects, in- 
fringed all the laws of their country.* Here, 



* Quarterly Register, Vol. iii. p. 89 ; and Beecher's 
Plea, p. 173. 



101 

then, if there is any meaning in language^ 
the popes explicitly and honestly tell us, 
that they do claim authority over the exist- 
ing civil governments of the land, and claim 
and exercise the power of abrogating the 
civil laws, made by the government. They 
do not even rest their claim on the fact, that 
the French and Portuguese had professed 
the Romish religion : because as Dens 5 
Theology, the present popish textbook in 
Maynooth College, where bishop England 
and multitudes of our Irish priests were 
educated, informs us, " Though they (the 
Protestants) are not of the {Romish) church, 
they (the Protestants) being baptised, are 
subject to the (Romish) church" !!! So 
that the same claim to the control of our 
government may be expected to be asserted 
by the pope, so soon as he finds his Catho- 
lics strong enough to sustain him. 

2. Again, the popes undertake to depose 
civil rulers and to absolve the people from 
their allegiance to their own civil govern- 
ments* even if they had formerly pledged 
that allegiance by an oath. 

The third Lateran council prescribes to 
9* 



102 

all good Catholics, " That oaths which con- 
travene the utility of the church, and the 
constitutions of the holy fathers, are not to 
be called oaths, but rather perjuries."* 

The fourth council of the Lateran is still 
more explicit in its decrees. Having first 
commanded that " the secular powers, what- 
ever office they execute, be admonished, per- 
suaded, and if necessary compelled by eccle- 
siastical censure, that as they desire to be 
reputed and accounted faithful, so they would 
publicly take an oath for the defence of the 
(Romish) faith ; that they will endeavour in 
good faith, according to their power to de- 
stroy all heretics marked by the church, out 
of the lands of their jurisdiction." — The 
council then proceeds to prescribe the re- 
medy of the church, in case any civil ruler 
should refuse to exterminate his subjects at 
the bidding of the papal minions. " But if 
the temporal prince, being admonished and 
required, shall neglect to purge his land 
from this heretical filthiness, he shall be 
excommunicated by the bishops of the pro- 

* Labbei Concilia, Tom. x. p. 1522. 



103 

vince, and if he shall refuse to give satisfac- 
tion within a year, let it be signified to the 
pope, that he may forthwith pronounce his 
vassals absolved from their allegiance 
(for not murdering their Protestant neigh- 
bours! ! !) and expose his land to be possessed 
by Catholics, who having destroyed the 
heretics, may possess it without contradic- 
tion, &c."* To the decrees of these councils 
among others, every pope binds himself to 
adhere, in the following words : " I also 
without doubt receive and profess all other 
things, delivered, defined and declared by the 
sacred canons and general councils, and 
especially by the holy council of Trent ; and 
all things contrary to them, with all heresies 
rejected and cursed by the church, I likewise 
condemn, reject and curse. "t And even the 
late pope Pius VII. explicitly says : " It is a 
rule of canon law, that the subjects of a 
prince manifestly heretical (Protestant) are 

RELEASED FROM ALL OBLIGATION to him, are 

dispensed from all allegiance and all 

* Labbei Concilia, Tom. xi. Part h p. 148, can. 3, 
and Home on Romanism, p. 30. 
t Pope Pius' Vllth Creed. 



104 

homage !!!" This is the theory of the 
Romish church, set forth in terms too expli- 
cit to be misunderstood. The popes, there- 
fore, down to the present incumbent, do 
evidently claim the right and avow it as 
their obligation to denounce Protestant 
rulers, and to absolve their subjects from 
all civil allegiance to them. 

That the popes havp not been remiss in 
the discharge of the duty enjoined on them 
by the canons, whenever they possessed the 
requisite power, is testified only too abun- 
dantly by the history of papal countries. 

Saint Gregory VII. twice anathematized 
and deposed the Emperor Henry IV. In 
1116 the Emperor Henry V. was deposed 
by Paschal II.; John, King of England, by 
Innocent III. in 1210, and Raymond, Count 
of Thoulouse, by the same pontiff, in 1215 ; 
the Emperor Frederick II. by Innocent IV. 
in 1245 ; Peter, King of Arragon, by Mar- 
iin v IV. in 1283 ; Matthew, Duke of Milan, 
in 1322, and Lewis of Bavaria, in 1324, by 
John XXII.; Barnabas, Duke of Milan, by 
Urban V. in 1363 ; Alphonso, King of Ar- 
ragon, in 1425, by Martin V.; the King of 



105 

Navarre, by Julius II. in 1512; Henry VIII. 
King of England, by Paul III. in 1538; 
Henry III. of France, in 1583, by Sixtus V.; 
who, on hearing of this monarch's assassi- 
nation by friar Jacques Clement, declared 
that the murderer's fervent zeal toward God 
surpassed that of Judith and Eleazar, and 
that the assassination was effected by Pro- 
vidence ! In 1591, Gregory XIV. and in the 
following year the ^ncanonically elected 
Pope, Clement VII., issued bulls of deposi- 
tion against Henry IV. King of France, 
whose life was first attempted by John Chas- 
tel, a Jesuit, then by a monk, and finally, he 
was stabbed by Ravaillac. In 1569 Saint 
Pius V. deposed Queen Elizabeth, whose 
Romanist subjects he stimulated to rebel 
against her, and furnished some of them 
with money to aid their nefarious attempts ; 
and bulls of deposition were fulminated 
against that illustrious Queen, by Gregory 
XIII. in 1580, Sixtus V. in 1587, and Cle- 
ment VIII. in 1600. Sixtus V. in his bull, 
styled her an usurper, a heretic, and an ex- 
communicate ; gave her throne to Philip II. 
of Spain, and commanded the English to join 



106 

the Spaniards in dethroning her. Clement 
VIII. in 1600, issued a bull to prevent James 
I. ascending the throne of England, declar- 
ing that " when it should happen that that 
miserable woman [Queen Elizabeth] should 
die, they [her subjects] should admit none 
to the crown, though eyer so nearly allied 
to it by blood, except they would not only 
tolerate the [Roman] Catholic religion, but 
promote it to the utmost of their power, and 
would, according to ancient custom, under- 
take upon oath to perform the same." In 
1643, Urban VIII. issued a bull of deposition 
against Charles I. in Ireland ; where two 
years before not fewer than 100,000 Protes- 
tants were massacred, and to those who had 
joined the rebellion of 1641, the same holy 
pontiff granted a plenary indulgence. In 
1729 Benedict XIII. at the instance of the 
Romanist Irish prelates, issued a bull to de- 
throne George II. King of England, with an 
indulgence for raising money to support 
the Pretender. In 1768, Clement XIII. pub- 
lished a brief, on occasion of certain edicts 
issued by the Duke of Parma and Placentia, 
in his own dominions ; wherein the pontiff, 



107 



in the plenitude of his usurped authority, 
abrogated, repealed, and annulled, as being 
prejudicial to the liberty, immunity, and 
jurisdiction of the church, whatever the 
Duke had ordered in his edicts, and forbade 
his subjects to obey their sovereign ; further 
depriving all, who had either published or 
obeyed the edicts, of all their privileges, and 
incapacitating them from receiving absolu- 
tion, until they should fully and entirely have 
restored matters to their former condition, 
or should have made suitable satisfaction to 
the church, and to the holy see. In 1800, the 
late pope Pius VII. announced his election to 
the pontificate to Louis XVIII. as the lawful 
King of France ; and in the following year 
he exhibited a most edifying instance of pa- 
pal duplicity, when it suited his interest, by 
entering into a concordat with Bonaparte, 
in which, besides suppressing 146 episco- 
pal and metropolitan sees, and dismissing 
their bishops and metropolitans without any 
form of judicature, he absolved all French- 
men from their oaths of allegiance to their 
legitimate sovereign, and authorized an 
oath of allegiance to the First Consul: and 



108 

when Louis XVIII. sent his ambassador to 
Rome to present his credentials, the pontiff 
refused to receive him. With marvellous 
infallibility, however, not quite eight years 
after, the same pontiff issued a bull (in June, 
1809,) excommunicating Bonaparte and all 
who adhered to him in his invasion of the 
papal states; in which bull he makes the 
same extravagant pretensions to supreme 
power which had been put forth by Saint 
Gregory VII., Innocent III. and other pon- 
tiffs.* 

But it may be asked, why have not the 
popes exercised this right against our own 
government, if they are in sober earnest in 
claiming its possession ? To this interroga- 
tion we will permit pope Pius himself to 
furnish a very satisfactory reply. " To be 
sure," he says, " we have fallen into such 
calamitous times, that it is not possible for 
the spouse of Jesus Christ to practise, nor 
expedient for her to recall her holy maxims 
of just rigour against the enemies of the 
faith. But although she cannot exercise her 

* See Home on Romanism, pp. 31, 32, 33. 



109 

right of depositig heretics (Protestants) fro??i 
their principalities, and declaring them 
deprived of their property ," &c. The rea- 
son, it seems, why the popes do not now 
dethrone Protestant rulers as they formerly 
did, is not a change in their principles, but 
a want of power to execute their wishes, an 
unwillingness on the part of the Protestant 
subjects to obey the lordly dictates of the 
pontiffs ! ! Hence the only course left for 
the holy father, is first to convert enough 
of these heretical subjects to the Romish 
church, and train them to implicit obedience 
to the priests, so that in due time they will 
be prepared to execute the pontifical man- 
date to "dethrone their heretical rulers," and 
extirpate their heretical fellow citizens. 

3. The third principle of Popery which 
has led to infringement of civil liberties of 
Protestants is, that Romish ecclesiastics, 
priests, ?no?iks, and nuns claim exemption 
from the civil jurisdiction of the govern- 
ments under which they live. 

The bull of Pope Paul V. termed "In 
coena Domini," or "At the supper of the 
Lord," in its fourteenth section, "excom- 
10 



110 

municates all persons, both ecclesiastical 
and secular, who appeal from the execution 
of the pontifical briefs, indulgences, or any 
other of their decrees — and all those who 
have recourse to secular courts for redress 
from Roman jurisdiction — and all those who 
hinder or forbid the publication and execu- 
tion of those letters and decrees ; and all 
those who molest, imprison, terrify or 
threaten those who execute the commands 
of the Roman court."* 

Section sixteenth, of the same bull, u curses 
all those who draw ecclesiastical persons, 
convents, &c, before their tribunal, against 
the rules of the canon law."t 

And section twenty, of the same instru- 
ment, completes the work. It anathema- 
tizes and excommunicates all and every the 
magistrates, judges, notaries, &c, who in- 
trude themselves in capital or criminal 
causes against ecclesiastical persons, by 
processing, apprehending or banishing them, 
or pronouncing or executing any sentences 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 690, 691. 
f Id., Vol. ii. p. 691. 



Ill 

against them, without the special, particu- 
lar, and express license of this holy aposto- 
lic see : and also all those who extend such 
licenses to persons or cases not expressed, 
or any other way abuse them, although the 
offenders should be counsellors, senators, 
chancellors, or entitled by any other 
" names"* The twenty-eighth section en- 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 691. St. Li- 
gori, the latest authority, quoted by Dr. Varela, in 
New York, affirms the same dangerous doctrine. 
"It is certain, (he says) that ecclesiastics are not 
subject to the civil law, either by canonical or civil 
right. They are bound, however, in conscience, by 
the civil laws which are not repugnant to their sta- 
tion. The civil law has no power to compel them, 
but it can give them directions, in order that they may 
conform to the community." — De Privileg. N. 18. 
" The clergy, (he continues) are exempt from punish- 
ment by the civil law."— Id., N. 19. See Smith's 
Ligori, a work that deserves to be in the hands of 
every American citizen, p. 207. 

That Catholic priests do not feel bound to speak 
the truth in some cases, even when on oath, is expli- 
citly asserted by this same saint, whose works were 
sanctioned by the Pope and Congregation of Rites at 
Rome in 1816. " A confessor may affirm even with 
an oath, that he knows nothing about a sin which he 



112 

joins it on all prelates, bishops, priests, &c, 
absolutely to publish this arrogant bull at 
least once a year in their churches. Whe- 
ther this bull is regularly published in this 
country we know not. Possibly the pope, 
who can and often has suited his religion to 
the times, has given a secret dispensation 
for a season in this republican country ; if 
not, it is now published, though probably in 
Latin, that it may not excite public atten- 
tion. In Roman Catholic countries it is 
faithfully published and acted on : and 
even "though the late Grand Duke Leo- 
pold, of Tuscany, frequently commanded 
the entire suppression of it in his territories, 
that paper was, notwithstanding, affixed by 
the priests to the confessionals and sacris- 
ties ; while others had the hardihood to 

has heard in confession, meaning thereby, that he 
does not know it as a man, but not that he does not 
know it as a minister of Christ." "A culprit or a 
witness who is interrogated by a judge unlawfully, 
can swear that he is ignorant, when in truth he 
knows."— Id. N. 153—154. Smith's Synopsis of 
Ligori, p. 160. 



113 

publish it from the pulpit or the altar on the 
day specified by the pope."* 

4. The fourth principle which makes them 
dangerous to civil government is, that their 
priests ■, fyc, are under such oaths to the 
pope and his kingdom, as render them ne- 
cessarily unfaithful to the civil liberties of 
any country. 

The oath taken by priests is as follows : 
"Omnia a sacris canonibus," &c. "All 
things defined by canons and general coun- 
cils, and especially by the Synod of Trent, 
I undoubtedly receive and profess. And 
all things contrary to them I reject and 
anathematize ; and from my dependents and 
others who are under my care, as far as 
possible, I will withhold. And this Catholic 
faith I will teach and enforce upon them." 
The canonical oath, which every prelate 
takes at his consecration, runs thus : " Ego 
ab hac hora," &c. "From this hour for- 
ward I will be faithful and obedient to my 
Lord the pope, and his successors. The 
counsels with which they trust me, I will 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 697. 
10* 



114 

not disclose to any man, to the injury of the 
pope and his successors. I will assist them 
to retain and defend the popedom and the 
royalties of Peter against all men. I will 
carefully conserve, defend and promote the 
rights, honours, privileges, and authority of 
the pope. I will not be in any council, pact 
or treaty, in which any thing prejudicial to 
the person, rights, or power of the pope is 
contrived ; and if I shall know any such 
things, I will hinder them to the utmost of 
my power, and with all possible speed I will 
signify them to the pope. To the utmost 
of my power I will observe the pope's com- 
mands, and make others observe them. I 
will impugn and persecute all heretics, 
(Protestants,) and rebels to my lord the 
pope. "* 

Now when it is recollected that the power 
claimed by the popes is as much, political 
as religious ; that he claims control over 
all civil governments, as has been already 
proved to you both by papal bulls and 

* Pontifical. Romanor. de Consecrat. Elect, in 
Episcopum, p. 57, and M'Gavin, Vol. ii. p. 694. 



115 

canons of councils, is it not difficult to evade 
the inference, that persons who have taken 
this oath to support all the power and "royal- 
ties" of the pope, cannot be true to the 
political interests of our own country and 
government, which are so diametrically op- 
posed to those of popery ? 

Of a character still more glaringly trea- 
sonable is the form of a " Jesuit's oath of 
secrecy, as it remains on record at Paris, 
among the Society of Jesus."* In order, 

* The Jesuits 1 Oath. — I, A. B., now in the presence 
of Almighty God, the blessed Virgin Mary, the bless- 
ed Michael the archangel, the blessed St. John Bap- 
tist, the holy apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and the 
saints and sacred hosts of heaven, and to you my 
ghostly father, do declare from my heart, without 
mental reservation, that his holiness Pope Urban is 
Christ's vicar general, and is the true and only head 
of the Catholic or universal church throughout the 
earth ; and that by the virtue of the keys of binding 
and loosing given to his holiness by my Saviour Je- 
sus Christ, he hath power to depose heretical kings, 
princes, states, commonwealths, and governments, 
all being illegal, without his sacred confirmation, and 
that they may safely be destroyed ; therefore, to the 
utmost of my power I shall and will defend this doc- 
trine, and his holiness's rights and customs against 



116 

it would seem, to keep the whole body of 
ecclesiastics detached from the interests of 



all usurpers of the heretical (or Protestant) authority 
whatsoever: especially against the now pretended 
authority and Church of England, and all adherents, 
in regard that they and she be usurpal and heretical, 
opposing the sacred mother Church of Rome. 1 do 
renounce and disown any allegiance as due to any 
heretical king, prince, or state, named Protestants, or 
obedience to any of their inferior magistrates or offi- 
cers. I do further declare, that the doctrine of the 
Church of England, of the Calvinists, Huguenots, 
and of other of the name Protestants, to be damna- 
ble, and they themselves are damned, and to be 
damned, that will not forsake the same. I do further 
declare, that I will help, assist, and advise all, or any 
of his holiness's agents in any place, wherever I 
shall be, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, or in any 
other territory or kingdom I shall come to ; and do 
my utmost to extirpate the heretical Protestants' 
doctrine, and to destroy all their pretended powers, 
regal or otherwise. I do further promise and declare, 
that notwithstanding I am dispensed with to assume 
any religion heretical for the propagating of the mo- 
ther church's interest, to keep secret and private all 
her agents' counsels from time to time, as they in- 
trust me, and not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by 
word, writing, or circumstances whatsoever: but to 
execute all that shall be proposed, given in charge, 



117 

civil governments, to make them an eccle- 
siastical and civil standing army, true only 
to the interests of the popes, the 43d canon 
of the Council of Lateran, under Innocent 
III., actually forbids the Romish priests 
from taking the oath of allegiance to the 
civil government : "Sacri auctoritate Con- 
cilii prohibemus," &c. " By the sacred au- 
thority of this Council, we declare, that it 
is unlawful for secular princes to require 
an oath of fidelity and allegiance of their 
clergy ; and peremptorily forbid all priests 
from taking any such oath if it be re- 
quired." According to this canon, no Ro- 
mish priest can be naturalized as a citizen of 

or discovered unto me, by you my ghostty father, or 
by any of this sacred convent. All which I, A. B., 
do swear by the blessed Trinity, and blessed sacra- 
ment, which I now am to receive, to perform, and on 
my part to keep inviolably : And do call all the hea- 
venly and glorious host of heaven to witness these 
my real intentions to keep this my oath. In testi- 
mony hereof, I take this most holy and blessed sa- 
crament of the eucharist ; and witness the same fur- 
ther with my hand and seal in the face of this holy 

convent, this day of An. Dom., &c. — 

M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 256. 



118 

our republic. It is a curious topic of inquiry, 
whether Romish priests do generally become 
naturalized or not. Would it not be an in- 
teresting and important circumstance, if the 
inquiry should establish the fact, that of the 
whole mass of foreign priests, not one has 
become a naturalized citizen of our country ? 
We do not assert the fact, yet we should 
not be surprised if it is found true. We 
have never ourselves heard of a case of 
such naturalization. 

Thus have we presented to you some of 
the anti-republican principles of popery, de- 
rived not from doubtful sources, not from 
the fabrications of Protestants, but from the 
bulls and canons of the Romanists them- 
selves, all which the priests are by oath 
bound to observe. Prior to the Reformation 
these principles were fully acted out in Eu- 
rope ; and since that time they are still 
observed in all Catholic countries, except 
where the civil governments, even though 
Catholic, have not fully submitted. In our 
own country the priests can accomplish their 
objects only by degrees. Yet do we not 
perceive symptoms of their progress ? Is it 



119 

not a fact, that even at this day there are 
some popish nunneries, &c, in our country, 
into the interior of which no civil officer is 
ever admitted?"* Does not this look like a 

* The following documents in relation to the 
Convent in Baltimore, are taken from the Baltimore 
Literary and Religious Magazine, edited by the Rev. 
R. J. Breckinridge. The witnesses are credible and 
respectable persons, and no explanation has yet been 
given of the mysterious circumstance to which they 
relate. If such cries had been heard in any other in- 
stitution, would the civil authorities not have exa- 
mined into the matter 1 

STATEMENT. 

We whose names are subscribed hereto, declare 

and certify, that on or about the — day of 183-, 

about nine o'clock at night, as we w*ere returning 
home from a meeting in the Methodist Protestant 
Church, at the corner of Pitt and Aisquith street, and 
when opposite the Carmelite Convent and school in 
Aisquith street, our attention was suddenly arrested 
by a loud scream issuing from the upper story of the 
Convent. The sound was that of a female voice in- 
dicating great distress — we stopped and heard a second 
scream, and then a third, in quick succession, accom- 
panied with the cry of help ! help ! oh, lord ! help ! 
with the appearance of great effort. After this there 
w T as nothing more heard by us during the space of ten 



120 

gradual assertion of the claim to exemption 
from civil control enjoined by their bulls 

or fifteen minutes — we remained about that time on 
the pavement opposite the building from which the 
cries came. 

When the cries were first heard, no light was visi- 
ble in the fourth story, from which the cries seemed 
to issue. After the cries, lights appeared in the se- 
cond and third stories — seeming to pass rapidly from 
place to place, indicating haste and confusion. Fi- 
nally, all the lights disappeared from the second 
and third stories, and the house became quiet. 

No one passed along the street where we stood, 
while we stood there. But one of our party was a 
man, and he advanced in life — all the remainder of 
us were women. The watch was not yet set, as 
some of us heard 9 o'clock cried before we got home. 
Many of us have freely spoken of these things 
since their occurrence, and now, at the request of 
Messrs. B. and C. and M. we give this statement — 
which we solemnly declare to be true — and sign it 
with our names. 

John Brushcup, 
Lavinia Brown, 
Sophronia Brushcup, 
Hannah Leach, 
Sarah E. Baker, 
Elizabeth Polk. 
Baltimore, March 13th, 1835. 



121 

and canons ? The hostility of their leaders 
to our political institutions has even been 
openly professed, and therefore cannot well 

CERTIFICATE OF THE MINISTER. 

This is to certify that John Brusheup, Hannah 
Leach, Sophronia Brusheup, Lavinia Brown, and 
Sarah E. Baker, are acceptable members of the Me- 
thodist Protestant Church, of Pitt street station. 
(Signed) 

William Collier, Superintendent. 

We take leave then (says the editor of the Maga- 
zine) to say in conclusion: — 1. This whole subject 
must be perfectly familiar to the Superior of the Con- 
vent, and to the priest who resides there as Confessor 
to the establishment, and we demand of them an ex- 
plicit and satisfactory account of this affair; in default 
of receiving which, we shall put upon their silence 
the only construction it can bear. 

2. The Archbishop of this diocess ought to know 
that such transactions are perpetrated in this establish- 
ment. And if all his American feelings are not swal- 
lowed up in his vows and duties to the head of the 
Holy Roman state, we expect and call upon him to 
ferret out this transaction and relieve the public mind, 
by a full statement of the affair. 

3. To aid him in his humane labours, we have to 

11 



122 

be denied by them, nor doubted by the most 
charitable Protestants. Bishop Fiaget of 
Kentucky complains in his letters to his su- 

say, that we are well assured that two females have 
died within six months in the Carmelite Convent ; 
and if he will furnish us with the date of their deaths, 
then we will furnish him with the date of the terrible 
affair to which we now call his paternal notice." 

And yet, in regard to entering into these abodes of 
uncleanness and cruelty, Catholic priests, according to 
the doctrine of their own sainted Ligori, feel it a duty 
to encourage children not to consult their own parents, 
the natural protectors whom God has given them. 
" Children (says Ligori) who wish to enter into the 
religious state (that is, to become monks or nuns) are 
not bound, neither is it expedient for them, to consult 
their parents. Children should be very cautious in 
respect to their vocation to a religious life, not to con- 
sult their parents (!!!); for it is said, ' make thy case 
known to thy friend,' because one's carnal relations 
are not friends in this affair, but enemies, according to 
what the Lord has said — ' A man's enemies are those 
of his own household.' From all this, the conclusion 
is, that children who enter into the religious state 
without consulting their parents, do not sin, but, ge- 
nerally speaking, they greatly err, if they let them 
know any thing about their vocation." — Smith's Sy- 
nopsis of Ligori, p. 231. 



123 

periors in Europe, that the conversion of the 
Indians to Romanism is principally retard- 
ed by their intercourse with the whites, 
"which," he adds, "cannot be hindered as 
long as this Republic shall subsist." Mr. 
Baraga, another Austrian Jesuit, laments 
"the evils of a free government ," and of 
"this too free government!!" When 
therefore we reflect, that republican institu- 
tions are alike hostile to the ecclesiastical 
despotism of Rome, and the civil despotism 
of Austria and Europe generally, nothing 
can be more evident than that the downfall 
of our government would advance the inte- 
rests of both ecclesiastical and political 
monarchists, and is naturally desired by 
them, even if they had not themselves con- 
fessed the fact. The monarchists and states- 
men of Europe well know the fruitlessness 
of an attempt to destroy our republic by 
open invasion. The only mode of reaching 
us is by indirect action. What pretext 
could be more specious than that of reli- 
gion ? And as Popery, which is a system of 
politico-religious despotism, is well under- 
stood to be hostile to liberty in every form, 



124 

the enemies of human rights must rejoice in 
its extension, however indifferent they may 
be to every thing like true religion. When, 
under these circumstances, we see hundreds 
of societies organized in Catholic Europe, 
and patronized by the first politicians and 
monarchists of Austria, to propagate popery 
in America, their motive may be easily 
conjectured. When we learn, too, that this 
motive is the current topic of conversation 
in the higher circles of Europe, and that the 
few friends of human liberty there feel an 
anxious apprehension from the machinations 
of Roman priests ; when even the venerable 
patriot Lafayette was constrained to exclaim 
to different American citizens, " If the liber- 
ties of your country are destroyed, it can 
only be by the popish clergy ;"* it becomes 

* " The very last interview (says Professor Morse) 
which I had with Lafayette on the morning of my 
departure from Paris, full of his usual concern for 
America, he made use of the same warning ; and in a 
letter which I received from him but a few days after 
at Havre, he alludes to the whole subject, with the 
hope expressed that I would make known the real 
state of things in Europe to my countrymen : at the 



125 

us to lend respectful attention to this subject, 
and in a suitable, Christian manner, endea- 
vour to resist the encroachments of the 
enemy. 

Here we are met by the objection, that 
papists, when interrogated, deny every in- 
tention hostile to our liberties, and ought 
they not to be believed ? We answer, the 
mass of common papists we have already 
exonerated from the charge of being privy 
to such designs. The secret has not been 
confided to them. They are only taught 
implicitly to obey the priest and pope and 
councils, at the hazard of eternal ruin, and 
thus, in due time, as common soldiers, to 
obey their commanders. But, some of their 
leading bishops and priests have denied all 
such design. True, but these are well ac- 
quainted with' the decree of the council of 
Constance, that no faith need be kept with 

same time charging it upon me as a sacred duty as 
an American, to acquaint them with the fears which 
were entertained by the friends of republican liberty, 
in regard to our country." — Preface to Professor 
Morse's edition of " Confessions of a French Catho- 
lic Priest," &c. p. ix. 

11* 



126 

heretics, in virtue of which poor Huss, 
though in possession of a, letter of safe con- 
duct from Emperor Sigismund himself, was 
committed to the flames. They well know 
also that this canon with respect to not keep- 
ing faith with heretics was distinctly recog- 
nized by the council of Trent, the last gene- 
ral council that has been held ; and that it 
is therefore still in force.* Now supposing 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, vol. i. p. 203, 204. His- 
tory abundantly testifies how faithfully the decree of 
that Council has been observed. Not to insist upon 
the numerous plots and conspiracies against the re- 
formed religion in Great Britain, from its establish- 
ment to the memorable gunpowder conspiracy, and 
the Irish conspiracy in 1729; witness the martyrdom 
of John Huss, who, though he had a safe conduct 
from the emperor Sigismund, guaranteeing his free 
access to the Council of Constance, and his free re- 
turn from it, was nevertheless imprisoned there ; and, 
after a process on a charge of heresy, was condemned 
and burnt to death, in violation of every law, human 
and divine. Witness the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew. Witness also the massacre of 1641, in Ireland, 
where (as in France, sixty-nine years before) no ties 
of nature or of friendship could prevent papists from 
embruing their hands in the blood of their nearest 
Protestant relations. To these instances may be add- 



127 

these priests even to be conscientious men, 
as they believe and obey those canons, they 
can state any thing, and deny any thing, 
even with an oath, as the papal bull de- 
clares, and their oath itself is not binding 
if the violation of it advances the interests 
of the church ! So long, therefore, as these 
canons remain unaltered, and priests con- 
ed the unprincipled revocation of the sacred and irre- 
vocable edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV., against the 
faith of the most solemn treaties. Once more, in 
1712, when by virtue of the treaty of Alt-Rastadt cer- 
tain places were to be surrendered to some Protestant 
princes, Pope Clement XI. in a letter to the emperor 
Charles VI. denounced the Protestants as " an exe- 
crable sect," and in the plenitude of his pretended 
supremacy declared that every thing, which either 
was or could be construed or esteemed to be in any 
way obstructive of, or in the least degree prejudicial 
to the Romish faith or worship, or to the authority, 
jurisdiction, or any rights of the church whatsoever, 
44 to be, and to have been, and perpetually to remain 
hereafter null, unjust, reprobated, void, and evacuated 
of all force from the beginning ; and that no person is 
bound to the observance of them, although the same 
have been repeated, ratified, or secured by oath" — 
Digest of Evidence on the State of Ireland, Part ii. p. 
243. Home on Romanism, p. 35, 



128 

tinue by an oath to bind themselves to 
obey them, they cannot reasonably expect 
intelligent Protestants to believe their dis- 
claimer. At the time of the American re- 
volution, the several Protestant churches, 
whose creeds contained a profession of 
allegiance to kings, &c, or other principles 
inconsistent with our republican institu- 
tions, expunged the objectionable articles, 
and threw off all foreign allegiance. But 
Catholics have never done so. Let them 
do this ; let them openly renounce alle- 
giance to all foreign potentates, and reject 
those canons of councils and bulls of the 
popes, which are hostile to our liberties; 
and they will secure the confidence of their 
fellow citizens : we shall be among the first 
to do them justice. In the mean time we 
must regard as the special work of God, 
that glorious Reformation, which opened 
the eyes of Europe on the corruptions and 
arrogant claims of popery; which taught 
princes to vindicate their rights against the 
encroachments of the pretended vicar of 
Him who had "no kingdom of this world. 5 ' 
Let us cherish the recollection of that won- 



129 

drous work of God, which restored to the 
people the blessed Bible, that principal 
instrument of the Reformation, and render- 
ed accessible to all, the pure and unerring 
plan of salvation taught by the Saviour 
and his apostles. In view of all the facts 
of the case, let the patriot and the Christian 
seriously inquire, whether the subject of 
progressive Romanism amongst us is not 
worthy of theif attention ; whether love to 
their wives and children does not call upon 
them to guard against even the distant dan- 
gers of papal cruelty and superstition ? Let 
them not regard with indifference the rapid 
increase of those foreign emissaries among us, 
who still retain their allegiance to a foreign 
power. Let them not regard as unchari- 
table those who re-echo the alarm which 
the apostle of liberty, Lafayette, first sound- 
ed in our ears. That order of men espe- 
cially, now spreading over our land, the 
disciples of Loyola, who have proved so 
formidable to the strong arm of civil govern- 
ment in Europe, as to have been suppressed 
or banished at thirty different times, should 
not be regarded as a contemptible foe, or 



130 

as unworthy of being attentively watched. 
Indeed nothing but want of acquaintance 
with their history, can lead any friend of 
liberty to view them with indifference. Let 
civilians and statesmen investigate, not the 
religious doctrines, but the political prin- 
ciples and political canons of popery, for 
popery is not less a political* than a reli- 

* The writer would earnestly invite the attention 
of his fellow citizens to the following extract from a 
highly interesting recent work, entitled, " Confessions 
of a French Catholic Priest; to which are added, 
Warnings to the People of the United States. " This 
priest is now in New York, and the translator, S. F. 
B. Morse, of the New York University, vouches for 
the character of the author and credibility of his 
statements. The scenes here revealed by one who 
was himself an actor in them, but whose awakened 
conscience prompted him to abandon such a corrupt 
association, will enable, politicians to appreciate the 
solemn prediction of the great Lafayette, that if Ame- 
rican liberty is destroyed it will be by Catholic priests. 
In reference to our own country, we would merely 
say, What intelligent politician does not know that, 
in some places, the Romanists already hold the ba- 
lance at our elections, and that whenever a papist is 
a candidate, or any thing can be gained to their 
cause, or either party is thought more favourable to 



131 

gious system. The priests and Jesuits form 
a standing army of foreign allegiance in our 
midst. Unconnected with our population 

the papists as such, they move in a body under the 
direction of the priest, with a unanimity utterly un- 
known in any Protestant sect? Their priesthood is 
a compactly organized legion, spread over the length 
and breadth of our land, each of whom can control 
almost every Catholic vote in his parish. All these 
priests are moved by eleven bishops, and by the 
archbishop and the pope's legate, Bishop England, 
the head of the Jesuitic order in this country. And 
all these, down to the lowest priest, are under an oath 
of allegiance to the pope, who is a political as well 
as religious prince, while, if we mistake not, few if 
any of them (the great majority of them are foreign- 
ers) have taken the oath of naturalization and sworn 
allegiance to our own government. Would it not be 
prudent, in the present circumstances of our country, 
to require by law all foreign priests and ministers of 
any and every denomination, Protestant and Catholic, 
before they can exercise their professional functions 
in this country, to become naturalized, and thus take 
the oath of allegiance to our own government ? Let 
the reader peruse the following extract from the warn- 
ing of the converted priest, and then answer my ques- 
tion : — 

" Americans of every age, of every rank, magis- 
trates and citizens, rich and poor, clergy and laity, 



132 

by the ties of domestic life, they live sub- 
servient to the interests of their alien mas- 
ter, and fight his battles. They are servants 

by all that is dearest to you, let a single feeling ani- 
mate you ; unite your ranks as in the day of battle, 
and if your foe attempts to introduce himself here, to 
creep in among you, let him meet every where an im- 
penetrable wall ; if he proposes to you to exchange 
the simple and pure faith of your fathers for his fana- 
ticisms and superstitions, your liberty for his thral- 
dom, answer as you would answer if any tyrant should 
propose to you to surrender your national flag and be- 
tray your country. 

" Such is the duty of every American, however 
you may be divided. Some ambitious men, I am in- 
formed, are to be found among you, hungry for power, 
who do not blush to make use of Catholics to com- 
pass their ends at the elections. Do those men be- 
long to that American people whose fidelity, union, 
and devotion, sixty years ago, astonished Europe, and 
commanded the admiration of the world ? In the 
days of your immortal struggle you had but one Ar- 
nold to betray the noble cause, and his name is dis- 
honoured for ever ; and now, Americans, forgetful of 
their origin, of their duty and country, forgetful of 
the patriotism of their fathers, of the blood which 
flows in their veins, buy and beg the very voices of 
their enemies, of Roman Catholic priests. This only 



133 

of the state as well as of the altar. Above 
all, let politicians, statesmen, and Christians 
of every denomination unite in circulating 

fact is an awful symptom, and proves but too truly 
that my fears are well founded. 

" But perhaps those misguided, ambitious men do 
not know the enemy with whom they would join 
themselves. Let them open their eyes then, and 
learn what true Catholics, and especially what priests 
have lately done in the elections of France. The 
history of past events is a lesson for the present day. 
When Louis XVIII. in 1819 granted his charter, 
which gave some rights to the French, all the true 
Catholics, and the clergy above all, chafed by this 
recognition of the people's rights, left no means un- 
tried to violate and distort it, till they destroyed it by 
the ordinances of July, 1830. During this long strug- 
gle of fifteen years, between Absolutism and Libe- 
ralism, my fellow priests used all their power to re- 
vive their party, especially on the great day of elec- 
tions. Then our bishops, (creatures of the king,) 
sent us their circulars, in order to warm our zeal and 
ardour. 

" And we, the faithful slaves of our spiritual Su- 
periors, used all our influence — made public prayers 
for good elections ,- we preached in the pulpit to our 
parishioners, in the catechism to the boys, in the con- 
fessional to every body, that Liberalism (or the party 
of Liberty) was a guilty heresy ,• it was a mortal sin 
12 



134 

the unadulterated word of God, without 
note or comment, either Papal or Protes- 
tant, among our Catholic fellow citizens, 

to give one's voice for this party, and we tried by 
every means to dishonour and tarnish its adherents.* 
The throne and the altar was the watch-word, was the 
enjoined text of all our discourses. We required in 
confession rigorously from the electors, the name and 
opinion of their candidates, obliged them to vote ac- 
cording to our direction, under pain of refusal of abso- 
lution, j- If electors themselves did not come to the 
confession, we, had their wives and daughters; and 
we recommended to them that they should employ all 
their influence to make their fathers and husbands of 
our party. 

" The government, which relied upon our zeal, which 
knew that its interests were ours, instituted many 
societies of itinerant missionaries. They went from 



* A singular proof of the natural hatred of the priests for liberty, 
is, that Lafayette is represented by them as a very bad man. In 
order to judge of this hero's character, it was necessary for me to 
come to America. 

t In 1833, the author assisted at the administration of the last 
sacrament to a dying country gentleman. The origin of his fortune 
was questionable, and he was a member of the Liberal party. His 
priest enjoined him, in order to legitimate his riches, to make some 
donations to the church ; but as for his vote, the priest compelled him 
to call in his family, to beg pardon, for the scandal of having given 
his vote to a Liberal man, and to beseech his eldest son not to follow 
his example. 



135 

and in persuading them to search the scrip- 
tures and think for themselves. Let efforts 
be made to bring their children under the 

city to city, from village to village, to revive the 
ashes of Catholicism and preach servitude. They 
formed brotherhoods and associations of both sexes, 
in which they enlisted the most devoted knights of 
their religion and royalism, the most ardent foes of 
liberty. And (striking circumstance, the best proof 
of the truth of my observations) all the deputies 
named by the country electors were enemies of liberty 
and of the press, because those country electors were 
under the influence of curates ; while in the cities the 
electors, more free and learned, chose deputies who 
were friends of freedom. 

" But when our party* saw that all its exertions 
were vain and useless, it introduced into the court of 
Charles X., about 18*26, a secret ecclesiastic council, 
composed of the cardinals De la Fare and De Latil, 
archbishops of Rouen and Rheims, the archbishop of 
Paris, M. De Guelen, and some pious laymen, worthy 
of their holy society. This council, called the Cama- 
rilla, directed all the acts of government; forced the 
public functionaries to go to confession ,• required from 
all the candidates to public situations an attestation 



* As I was only a secondary wheel of this infernal machinery, I 
knew not all its secrets ; but these few revelations are true to the 
letter. 



136 

influence of Sabbath-school instruction. 
Let all, both young and old, be treated in 
the spirit of true Christian benevolence, and 

of Catholic and Royalist principles delivered by the 
curate ; pressed the unhappy Charles X. to name his 
stupid ministry of the 8th of August, 1829; and at 
length, to issue the fatal ordinances of July, 1830. 
Thus has the Popish clergy lengthened the struggle 
for liberty, and compromised the well-being of thirty- 
three millions of Frenchmen ; thus it has divided them 
into fwt> camps of mortal enemies ; thus, at last, has 
it ingloriously crowned the long story of its cruelty 
and oppression in my unfortunate country. 

"Since the accession of Louis Philip, the priests 
have kindled again the flames of civil war. They 
have sprinkled again with holy water the guns and 
pick-axes of the poor and slavish peasants of La 
Vendee* and Britagny, to raise them against the po- 
pular throne. But this new crime has ended, after 
some bloody rights, in bringing on La Vendee an 
army of thirty thousand soldiers, who at the present 
time, crush this province, the tool of its priests ; and 
the clergy, seeing that Philip becomes from day to day 
as despotic as his predecessors, rallies itself round 

* Every body knows that La Vendee has been devastated by sword 
and flames, and unpeopled, in its wars excited by its priests against 
the republic in 1793-4. They attempted in 1830 to renew the same 
horrors, but Philip has employed the most rigorous and oppressive 
measures to prevent it. 



137 

we doubt not, that under God, much can 
be accomplished for the preservation of 
our liberties, and the glory of our Divine 
Master. 

him, and unites once more the throne and the altar. 
Such as these are the men with whom you ally your- 
selves, Americans ; whose suffrages you beg, whose 
assistance you ask, in your elections : these are the 
men with whom you would divide the future desti- 
nies of your country. I wish you would but look at 
the history of Popery, and examine and see if ever a 
Catholic country has been happy " — p. 245-249. 

See also, on the political bearings of Popery, Dr. 
Breckinridge's Discussion with Mr. Hughes, passim. 



12* 



INDEX. 

Page 

Admonition to Americans by Lafayette, 124 

Allegiance, oath of, Romish priests forbidden to take it, 117 
American Catholics, innocent of designs against our 
liberty, v 

Augsburg, diet of, 22. Pacification of, in 1 555, ..... 22 

Baltimore, suspicious cries for help heard in the con- 
vent of, 119—121 

Bartholomew's Eve, massacre of, 89, 90 

Bible, Romish, corrupted, 30. Hostility of papists 
to, 31. The acknowledged textbook of Protest- 
ant religion, 32 

, Luther providentially finds, 21. The Reforma- 
tion restores it to the world, 25. Its design, 26. 
Duty of laity to read it, 27. Agent of Reforma- 
tion, 29. Reason of its interdiction, 29 

Bishops, Romish, hostile to American liberty,. = .121 — 123 
Brownlee, Dr., his work referred to, 73 

Calvin, his labours and character, 24 

Catholic Manual, extract from, 59 

Cathedral, Baltimore, its vaults, 88 

Celibacy, professed, of priests and nuns, .42 — 44 

, its consequences, 44, 45 

of clergy, its design, 37 

Civil jurisdiction, exemption from, claimed by priests 

and nuns, 109, &c. Proved by papal bulls, 109, 110. 

By St. Ligori, 1 10, 1 1 1 

139 



140 

page 

Confession to priests, indecent questions proposed to 

females, 58—61. 65—69 

, its nature and abuses among Romanists,. 63, 64 

— also a political machine, 64, 65 

sometimes used to enjoin crimes, 64 

Conscience, liberty of, restored by the Reformation, . . 66 
, Romanism hostile to liberty of, . . 66. 77, &c. 97 

Dens, Peter, his Theology quoted, 62 

■ , studied by Irish priests,. ... 62 

Despots, foreign, co-operation with the Romish church, 123 

England, Bishop, his Jesuitic defence of the Inqui- 
sition, 78, 79 

Erasmus, 17 

Europe, its condition before the Reformation, 89 

Faith not to be kept by Romanists with heretics, 125 — 127 

Fears of Romish priests, by Lafayette, 124 

French priest, confessions of, 130 — 137 

Garnet, superior of the Jesuits, 35, 36 

Greek empire, its downfall, 16, 17 

Gregory VIL, his unbounded schemes, 36, 37 

Gunpowder plot, horrible conspiracy by the Jesuits,. 35, 36 

Hume, his account of Irish rebellion, 91, 92 

Huss, 18 

Index expurgatorius, s 73, 74 

Indulgences, papal, 40, 41 

Inquisition, established and sustained by the Romish 

church, 79—83 

, 2,000,000 murdered by it in Spain, 83 

, its different modes of torture, 84 — 88 



141 

Page 

Inquisition, its tortures inflicted under ground, 88 

Jesuits, a papal standing army, 131, 132 

Jesuit's oath, 114, 115 

Lafayette, his fears that Romish priests will destroy 

American liberty, 124 

hated by priests, 134 

Laity, Catholic, unacquainted with the designs of their 

priests, vi 

Liberal party before the Reformation, 17 

Liberty, civil, Romanism inconsistent with, 97 — 137 

Ligori, St., his testimony, 52 

Luther, his birth, 14. Sets up as Reformer, 20 

Mary, Virgin, pretended intercession of, 34. 38 

Massacre of Protestants in Ireland, 91, 92 

Montreal, nunnery of. 54 

Nantes, edict of, revoked, . 91 

Nunneries, their licentious character, 45, 46 

, character of, at present in Europe, 49 — 58 

, cells in, to imprison nuns, 54 — 58 

Oath, disregarded by popes, 107. By priests, 111. By 
some papal witnesses, Ill 

of priests, 112. Of bishops, 113. Of Jesuits, 114, 115 

Pelican, 28 

Persecution sanctioned by Romish Bible, 77 

opposed by Protestants, 93 — 95 

enjoined by Romish church, 74 — 93 

cost 68 millions of lives, 93 

Popes, their immoral character, 14 — 16 

depose civil rulers, 101 — 105 

Popes absolve from the oath of civil allegiance,. .101, 102 



142 

Page 

Press, freedom of, suppressed in Catholic countries, .71, 72 

Prostitutes licensed by the pope, 47 

Priests political agents in France, 133 

may be in America, 131 

Reformation, its commencement, 20. Its necessity ac- 
knowledged, 16. In Germany, 22. Switzerland, 23. 
Sweden, 23. Denmark, 23. England, 23. Scotland, 24 

Revolution, the late French, 135, 136 

Ricci, Scipio de, his testimony and character, 48, 49 

Romanism claims superiority over civil governments, 98, &c. 

claims the right forcibly to suppress Pro- 
testants, 100 

a system of politics — religious despotism,. 123 

Rulers, civil, deposed by popes, 101 — 105 

Saints worshiped by papists, 34. Character of some 

pretended saints, 35 — 38 

Savonarola, account of, 18, 19 

Sacraments, corruption of, 39 

Seduction of females at confession, 65 — 69 

Tetzel,.. 20 

Theses, ninety-five of Luther, 20 

Votes controlled at the confessional, 134 

Waldenses persecuted, 91 

Zwingle, Ulrich, 22 



THE END. 



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